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The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877

Yale,, Spring 2008 , Prof. David Blight

Updated On 02 Feb, 19

Overview

Introductions: Why Does the Civil War Era Have a Hold on American Historical - Southern Society: Slavery, King Cotton, and Antebellum America's - A Southern World View: The Old South and Proslavery Ideology - A Northern World View: Yankee Society, Antislavery Ideology and the Abolition Movement - Telling a Free Story: Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in Myth and Reality - Expansion and Slavery: Legacies of the Mexican War and the Compromise of 1850 - "A Hell of a Storm": The Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Birth of the Republican Party, 1854-55 - Dred Scott, Bleeding Kansas, and the Impending Crisis of the Union, 1855-58 - John Brown's Holy War: Terrorist or Heroic Revolutionary? - The Election of 1860 and the Secession Crisis - Slavery and State Rights, Economies and Ways of Life: What Caused the Civil War? - "And the War Came," 1861: The Sumter Crisis, Comparative Strategies - Terrible Swift Sword: The Period of Confederate Ascendency, 1861-1862 - Never Call Retreat: Military and Political Turning Points in 1863 - Lincoln, Leadership, and Race: Emancipation as Policy - Days of Jubilee: The Meanings of Emancipation and Total War - Homefronts and Battlefronts: - "War So Terrible": Why the Union Won and the Confederacy Lost at Home and Abroad - To Appomattox and Beyond: The End of the War and a Search for Meanings - Wartime Reconstruction: Imagining the Aftermath and a Second American Republic - Andrew Johnson and the Radicals: A Contest over the Meaning of Reconstruction - Constitutional Crisis and Impeachment of a President - Black Reconstruction in the South: The Freedpeople and the Economics of Land and Labor - Retreat from Reconstruction: The Grant Era and Paths to The "End" of Reconstruction: Disputed Election of 1876, and the "Compromise of 1877" - Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory - Legacies of the Civil War

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Lecture 24: Retreat from Reconstruction The Grant Era and Paths to

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Lecture Details

The Civil War and Reconstruction (HIST 119)

This lecture opens with a discussion of the myriad moments at which historians have declared an "end" to Reconstruction, before shifting to the myth and reality of "Carpetbag rule" in the Reconstruction South. Popularized by Lost Cause apologists and biased historians, this myth suggests that the southern governments of the Reconstruction era were dominated by unscrupulous and criminal Yankees who relied on the ignorant black vote to rob and despoil the innocent South. The reality, of course, diverges widely from this image. Among other accomplishments, the Radical state governments that came into existence after 1868 made important gains in African-American rights and public education. Professor Blight closes the lecture with the passage of the 15th Amendment, the waning radicalism of the Republican party after 1870, and the rise of white political terrorism across the South.

0000 - Chapter 1. Introduction Peace Among Whites? End of Reconstruction?
0505 - Chapter 2. Freedmens Desires for Socioeconomic and Political Mobility
1723 - Chapter 3. The Myth of the "Carpetbag Rule"
2953 - Chapter 4. The Lasting Influences of the Carpetbaggers
3851 - Chapter 5. The Passing of the 15th Amendment and Waning of Republican Radicalism
4807 - Chapter 6. The Growing White Supremacist Violence and Conclusion

Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website httpopen.yale.educourses

This course was recorded in Spring 2008.