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 ...
What Price Freedom: Republicans Legislate Harsher Approach to Reconstruction
Republicans in Congress legislate a more radical version of reconstruction through a series of Reconstruction Acts they pass over Johnson's veto. It is clear that they don't want treasons Southerners in Congress within months of the war's end. They ...
What Price Freedom: Emancipation and Reunification: Challenges to Peacemaking
There are two primary goals at the end of the Civil War, reuniting the country and emancipation, but no one knows exactly what freedom for blacks means. Freed people know what they want--literacy and land--but taking land from the planter class and ...