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UT Arlington HIST 1312 - Reconstruction

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HIST 1312 1st Edition Lecture 9Outline of Last Lecture I. Topic 1a. Foodb. DrinkII. Topic 2a. Tobaccob. DrugsOutline of Current Lecture III. The Meaning of Freedoma. Families in Freedomb. Church and Schoolc. Political Freedomd. Land, Labor, and Freedome. Masters without Slaveryf. The Free Labor Visiong. The Freedman’s Bureauh. The Failure of the Land Reformi. The White FarmerIV. The Making of Radical ReconstructionThese notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used asa supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.a. Andrew Johnsonb. The Failure of Presidential Reconstructionc. The Black Codesd. The Radical Republicanse. The Origins of Civil Rightsf. The Fourteenth Amendmentg. The Reconstruction Acth. Impeachment and the Election of Granti. The Fifteenth Amendmentj. The “Great Constitutional Revolution”k. The Rights of WomenV. Radical Reconstruction in the South a. “The Tocsin of Freedom”b. The Black Officeholderc. Carpetbaggers and ScalawagsCurrent LectureThe Meaning of Freedom- During Reconstruction, freedom became a terrain of conflict, its substance open to different, often contradictory interpretations- African-Americans’ understanding of freedom was shaped by their experiences as slaves and their observation of the free society around them- To begin with, freedom meant escaping the numerous injustices of slavery – punishmentby the lash, the separation of families, denial of access to education, the sexual exploitation of black women by their owners – and sharing in the rights and opportunities of American citizens- Families in Freedomo With slavery dead, institutions that had existed before the war, like the black family, free blacks’ churches and schools, and the secret slave church, were strengthened, expanded and freed from white supervisiono The family was central to the post-emancipation black community o While freedom helped to stabilize family life, it also subtly altered relationships within the family- Church and Schoolo At the same time, blacks abandoned white-controlled religious institutions to create churches of their owno Black ministers came to play a major role in politicso Another striking example of the freedpeople’s quest for individual and community improvement was their desire for educationo Blacks of all ages flocked to the schools established by northern missionary societies, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and groups of ex-slaves themselveso Reconstruction also witnessed the creation of the nation’s first black colleges Fisk University in Tennessee Hampton Institute in Virginia Howard University in the nation’s capital- Political Freedomo The right to vote inevitably became central to the former slaves’ desire for empowerment and equalityo Anything less than full citizenship, black spokesmen insisted, would betray the nation’s democratic promise and the war’s meaning- Land, Labor, and Freedomo Like those of rural people throughout the world, former slaves’ ideas of freedom were directly related to landownershipo On the land they would develop independent communities free of white controlo Many former slaves insisted that through their unpaid labor, they had acquired a right to the lando In its individual elements and much of its language, former slaves’ definition of freedom resembled that of white Americans – self-ownership, family stability, religious liberty, political participation, and economic autonomyo For whites, freedom, no matter how defined, was a given, a birthright to be defendedo For African-Americans, it was an open-ended process, a transformation of every aspect of their lives and of the society and culture that had sustained slavery in the first place- Masters without Slaveso Most white southerners reacted to military defeat and emancipation with dismay, not only because of the widespread devastation but also because they must now submit to northern demandso The appalling loss of life, a disaster without parallel in the American experience, affected all classes of southernerso Nearly 260,000 men died for the Confederacy – more than 1/5 of the South’s adult male white populationo The widespread destruction of work animals, farm buildings, and machinery ensured that economic revival would be slow and painfulo Planter families faced profound changes in the war’s aftermath Many not only lost their slaves but also their life savings, which they invested in now worthless Confederacy bonds Some found themselves actually having to do physical labor for the first time- The Freedom Labor Visiono Republican North tried to implement its own vision of freedomo Central to its definition was the antebellum principle of free labor, now further strengthened as a definition of the good society by the Union’s triumpho In the free labor vision of a reconstructed South, emancipated blacks, enjoying the same opportunities for advancement as northern workers, would labor more productively than they had as slaveso With planters seeking to establish a labor system as close to slavery as possible, and former slaves demanding economic autonomy and access to land, a long period of conflict over the organization and control of labor followed on plantations throughout the Southo It fell to the Freedmen’s Bureau, an agency established by Congress in March 1865, to attempt to establish a working free labor system- The Freedmen’s Bureauo Bureau agents were supposed to establish schools, provide aid to the poor and aged, settle disputes between whites and blacks and among the freedpeople, and secure for former slaves and white Unionists equal treatment before the courtso It lasted from 1865-1870o By 1869, nearly 3,000 schools, serving more than 150,000 pupils in the South- The Failure of Land Reformo One provision of the law establishing the bureau gave it the authority to divide abandoned and confiscated land into forty-acre plots for rental and eventual sale to the former slaveso In the summer of 1865, however, President Andrew Johnson ordered nearly all land in federal hands to be returned to its former ownerso A series of confrontations evicted blacks who had settles on “Sherman land”o Because no land distribution took place, the vast majority of rural freedpeople remained poor and without property during Reconstructiono They had no alternative but to work on white-owned plantations, often for their former ownerso The failure of land reform


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UT Arlington HIST 1312 - Reconstruction

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