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Full-Text Articles in History
The History Of Reconstruction’S Third Phase, Allen C. Guelzo
The History Of Reconstruction’S Third Phase, Allen C. Guelzo
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
There is no Society for Historians of Reconstruction. That should tell you something. There are also no Reconstruction re-enactments, and no museums teeming with artifacts of Reconstruction. Because what, after all, would there be for us to re-enact? The Memphis race massacre of May 1-3, 1866? And what artifacts would we be proud to display? Original Ku Klux Klan outfits (much more garish than the bland white-sheet versions of the 1920s)? Serial-number-identified police revolvers from the New Orleans’ Mechanics Institute killings of July 30, 1866? Looked at coldly, the dozen years that we conventionally designate as “Reconstruction” constitute the bleakest …
Reconstruction As A Pure Bourgeois Revolution, Allen C. Guelzo
Reconstruction As A Pure Bourgeois Revolution, Allen C. Guelzo
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
The years between 1865 and 1877, which form the period in American history known as Reconstruction, compose a sort of coda to the traumatic opera of the American Civil War of 1861–65. Reconstruction embraces the twelve years of active effort to rebuild the American Union, though in some sense (because Reconstruction had no official starting or ending date) aspects of it spluttered on well into the 1890s. I use the word spluttered deliberately, because Reconstruction is also the ugly duckling of American history in the eyes of many American historians, and something the public considers vaguely awful if it thinks …
Robert E. Lee And Slavery, Allen C. Guelzo
Robert E. Lee And Slavery, Allen C. Guelzo
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
Robert E. Lee was the most successful Confederate military leader during the American Civil War (1861–1865). This also made him, by virtue of the Confederacy's defense of chattel slavery, the most successful defender of the enslavement of African Americans. Yet his own personal record on both slavery and race is mottled with contradictions and ambivalence, all which were in plain view during his long career. Born into two of Virginia's most prominent families, Lee spent his early years surrounded by enslaved African Americans, although that changed once he joined the Army. His wife, Mary Randolph Custis Lee, freed her own …
Defending Reconstruction, Allen C. Guelzo
Defending Reconstruction, Allen C. Guelzo
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
There are no Reconstruction re-enactors. And who would want to be? Reconstruction is the disappointing epilogue to the American Civil War, a sort of Grimm fairy tale stepchild of the war and the ugly duckling of American history. Even Abraham Lincoln was uneasy at using the word “reconstruction”—he qualified it with add-ons like “what is called reconstruction” or “a plan of reconstruction (as the phrase goes)”—and preferred to speak of the “re-inauguration of the national authority” or the need to “re-inaugurate loyal state governments.” Unlike the drama of the war years, Reconstruction has no official starting or ending date. ( …
November Turmoil, John M. Rudy
November Turmoil, John M. Rudy
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
November meant turmoil. It meant upheaval. It meant confusion. Americans had tried to speak in a clear voice, but they were about split down the center. So divided was the nation, there was no clear winner. The Democrats seized the population vote; the Electoral College fell firmly on the Republican side. The very future of the republican democracy hung in the balance. [excerpt]
Commentary: 14th Amendment Laid Foundation Of Civil Liberties, Allen C. Guelzo
Commentary: 14th Amendment Laid Foundation Of Civil Liberties, Allen C. Guelzo
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
They had just glued the world back together, and within a year it was threatening to come apart again.
That might sound like a description of the Arab Spring, or even the fall of the Soviet Union. In fact, it's what happened 150 years ago in the United States. [excerpt]
What If Abraham Lincoln Had Lived?, Allen C. Guelzo
What If Abraham Lincoln Had Lived?, Allen C. Guelzo
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
The lead .41-calibre bullet with which John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln on the night of April 14, 1865, was the most lethal gunshot in American history. Only five days earlier, the main field army of the Southern Confederacy had surrendered at Appomattox Court House, and the four dreary years of civil war were yielding to a spring of national rebirth. But by then, the man to whom everyone looked for guidance in reconstructing the nation was dead. [excerpt]
"The Most Awful Problem That Any Nation Ever Undertook To Solve": Reconstruction As A Crisis In Citizenship, Allen C. Guelzo
"The Most Awful Problem That Any Nation Ever Undertook To Solve": Reconstruction As A Crisis In Citizenship, Allen C. Guelzo
Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications
Reconstruction is the step-child of the Civil War, the black hole of American history. It lacks the conflict and the personalities that make the Civil War so colorful; it also lacks the climactic feuds and battles, and dissipates into a confusing and wearisome tale of lost opportunities, squalid victories, and embarrassing defeats whose ultimate endpoint is the great American disgrace - Jim Crow. It lives with the short end of the historical stick for accomplishing too much, then accomplishing too little, with the result that almost the worst thing that can be said about someone in American history is that …