Tattered Remains: System of Sharecropping
At first, the Freedman's Bureau grants land from abandoned plantations to thousands of black families, but the "gift" is only temporary as most of the land is returned to its former owners. Northerners assume that a free labor system will emerge in ...
Tattered Remains: Obstruction of Voting Rights for Southern Blacks
Few white Southerners ever accept the idea of racial equality. The fact that former slaves acquire legal and political rights is the result of federal support which all but vanishes after federal troops withdraw in 1877. The Fifteenth Amendment that...
Tattered Remains: Southern Economy, The
In an effort to diversify the economy in the years after the Civil War, Southern industry does expand. However, new jobs in the Alabama steel industry or the textile industries in the Carolinas are generally limited to white workers. Some blacks do ...
Tattered Remains: Horror of Lynching, The
Lynching is a brutal form of oppression intended to silence, intimidate and terrorize African-Americans as well as a few other groups in the South that some whites believe must be kept in their place. The incidence of lynchings is greater in states ...
Tattered Remains: Emergence of the Ku Klux Klan
During the Grant administration interest in Reconstruction fades as the North becomes preoccupied with its own problems. Before Grant leaves office in 1876 Democrats redeem seven of he eleven former Confederate states. It is a setting in which terro...
Tattered Remains: Rebuilding African-American Family Structures
One of the most striking features of the Reconstruction period is the effort of blacks to rebuild their family structures. Marriage between African-Americans is legalized; their children are their own and cannot be sold away. The traditional family ...
Tattered Remains: Reconstruction: The Civil War in Broader Perspective
In the generations to come, people in the North and the South will have very different perceptions about the successes and failures of Reconstruction. Its success lies mainly in the fact that the nation does reunite despite difficulties at every lev...
Battle Cry: Challenges Facing Lincoln in the Fall of 1862
The Republicans retain their majority in the mid-term elections of 1862 despite Democratic gains. Lincoln continues to have difficulties with inept generals. After Antietam, Lincoln fires McClellan who seems more interested in political than milita...
House Divided: Realities Confronting North and South in the Second Year of Conflict
In the spring and summer of 1862, the Peninsular Campaign led by Union Army General George McClellan is driven back by the Confederates commanded by Robert E. Lee, then defeated once again at Bull Run (Manassas). Ulysses S. Grant's forces defeat the...
House Divided: United States Comes Apart, The
Bitterness marks aftermath of 1860 election. Southern states fear that the election of Abraham Lincoln and Republican dominance of Congress means that their way of life based on slavery will be violated. The legislature of South Carolina quickly cal...