...Tatyana Dotson Part II: Report on the Condition of the South (1865) 5. According to Schurz, the overall goal of Reconstruction is to reconstruct southern society and bring it back into American Society as a whole. He also mentions that it is also about the relationship between the constitution and the general public. 6. Schurz says the transition between the freedman and the south is so difficult to achieve because the south feels that the Union was so harsh and vengeful to them, and now they are changing their way of life so drastically. He touches on this by saying “in the midst of this critical period of transition, the power which originated the revolution is expected to turn over its whole future development to another power which from the beginning was hostile to it and has never yet entered into its spirit”. This just shows how it was already problematic. Added to this, the now freedman have to fend and protect themselves in an already angry and racist environment. Schurz explains this by saying “…leaving the class in whose favor it was made completely without power to protect itself and to take an influential part in that development.” 7. Southern soldiers also faced many problems when they came back home. Schurz states that “They found, many of them, their homesteads destroyed, their farms devastated, their families in distress”. The soldiers came back to an entire new world that was unfamiliar and stressful, which cause the embarrassment....
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...and all over. The article “The New View of Reconstruction” by Eric Foner sheds brilliant new light on an age-old opinion. It was a commonly held belief that Reconstruction was the time when the radical northerners, or the Vindictives, enforced black supremacy upon the helpless south, while the carpetbaggers made a fortune amid the chaos. Eric Foner’s article highlights that this interpretation of Reconstruction was fostered by anti-Reconstruction propaganda and adopted academically by William Dunning around the turn of the century. He further brings out that films like Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind spread the myth-like idea of the years after the Civil War. Foner explains that this view of Reconstruction was widely accepted because it fit with the political and social mentalities of the time that allowed white southerners to vehemently oppose integration and true black suffrage. Despite the convenience of the traditional view of Reconstruction it would soon lose prominence. The original opinion was that Lincoln was ready to accept the South with little reprimands and that Johnson tried to fulfill Lincoln’s policies, the current opinion, as stated by Foner, is “President Lincoln did not have a coherent plan’ for Reconstruction, but at the time of his assassination he had been cautiously contemplating black suffrage. Andrew Johnson was a stubborn, racist politician who lacked the ability to compromise”. Foner further explains that the Radicals were exonerated of their...
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...Reconstruction and the West Anthony Webb College of Humanities His/120 Version 5 U.S. History 1865 to 1945 Resolution/Sociology 110 February 16, 2013 Elizabeth Jewell Reconstruction of the South According to Eric Foner (2008), “even though Reconstruction failed to meet the goals of Radical Republicans, painlessly rebuild the South, and give the freed blacks complete rights, Reconstruction did give African Americans some new chances and a brief taste of a free society ("Was Reconstruction a," 2008). Public schools were instituted; blacks became citizens, and some whites even offered support with the civil rights movement. However, every opportunity that was given to the free blacks was met with much opposition. As a result, more could have been done. The late 19th century was a troubling time, and although freed slaves were negatively impacted, Whites, and Indians were also affected by the economical hardships. Several events occurred which gave me cause to agree with Eric Foner’s description of the Reconstruction as a “splendid failure”. Blacks did not receive all their rights until 100 years after the war. Furthermore, Northern-born white men who moved south after the Confederacy defeat were called carpetbaggers by Southerners, and Southern-born white Republicans were given the name scalawag; Blacks held fewer governmental positions and was smaller than their proportion in the population; Indians suffered from the white Americans’ racism...
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...Reconstruction And The New South Sandra Michelli HIS 125 June 23, 2013 Paul Sunderman Reconstruction and The New South 1. Columbian historian Eric Foner (1983) quotes W. E. B. DuBois in calling Reconstruction a “splendid failure (p. 16).” After studying the events of the late 19th century, defend whether or not you agree with his position. What are the long-term implication? “A Splendid Failure”, a statement made by the African American Historian. W.E.B. Du Bois has been used to describe what some see as the best way to describe the results of the Reconstruction Era. So the question one has to ask is if this remark is actually true. Was Reconstruction a 100% failure or where there some success that came out of this time period in American History? I would say that it was neither, that in fact there were some success and there were some failures. The best way to describe my point is to use what the Military calls and After Action Report and see what these success and failures were. In looking at success of the Radical Reconstruction period the first one that stands out is in fact some say the reason the United States split and ended up in the bloody Civil War. That being the fact that Slavery was abolished. It was now once and for all illegal for a person to own another person as property. Schools for blacks were being created that had not existed before. Schools such as Salem University which was founded in Mississippi in 1872 would not have existed had access...
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...A comparison of the Virginia Resolutions on the Stamp Act (1765) and the Association of the New York Sons of Liberty (1773) Darrell Hareford 10/14/2012 An examination of two documents from Eric Foner’s Voices of Freedom reader – Vol I and their relevance to the historical point in time in American History. Taxation was stirring sharp conflict between Great Britain and the British colonists of North America in the mid-18th century. The British colonists of North America lived under a quasi-self-government created in the early 1600’s. Powerful men in the colonies established their own devices and alliances for the raising and spending of money. The arguments of liberty and freedom were to become the tenets of choice in their debate to defend this power. This paper will explore this argument through the Virginia Resolutions on the Stamp Act (1765) from the House of Burgesses, and a resolution from the Sons of Liberty of New York City (1773). Their writings are tempered only by the politeness of the society of learned men, but let no one doubt that they took affront to the loss in authority and the economic impact of recent taxation decisions by Great Britain. The House of Burgesses was established in 1619 as a representative body to govern in a legislative assembly and was created by the Virginia Company to make conditions more amenable by encouraging English craftsman to settle in North America. The Virginia Company set up a system of self-government which was composed...
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...not have the need for the money like the outside European world did. They relied on each other and the tribes around them. Different tribes were able to specialize in certain areas and then they could trade what they needed. While they did not have the sophisticated economy like the Europeans had, they were doing much better than after the Europeans arrived and started to try to change their way of life. Thomas Morton stated “, that the natives of the land lived so poorly in so rich a Country.” 1 There were so many things that the Native Americans did that Morton could not believe they did because all the travelers saw was vast land that could be sorted through. The Natives knew how to utilize the land and did not need 1. Eric Foner, Voices of Freedom (New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2014), 6. to keep moving west to live. Another point in Native American culture that was strange to the Europeans, was how they dealt with the land. The land was not owned by anyone but used as a tribe for a season and...
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...The Reformation Movement Research Paper History 117 1. During the 1830s to the 1850s indicated a period when people were beginning to get a sense of reformation regarding American idealism of a democratic and free society. The core goal to end slavery became the central focus to a group known as abolitionists. Formed by a limited amount of men and women both white and black, the abolitionists came most from the North with hardly any from the South. The beliefs of the abolitionists to end slavery in the mid eighteen hundreds, came from not only their understanding of freedom and citizenship which meant equal rights for all persons regardless of their skin color or racial background, but the fact African Americans had not received any rights, and had used slaves as a source of income. Abolitionists indicated “African Americans should be recognized as American citizens and incorporated into the nation”[1], since American society intended for everyone living in the United States to be citizens. Black and white abolitionists who tried to end slavery were William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Weld, and Frederick Douglas. 2. The movement of the abolition of slavery started to intensify as both northern and southern individuals gathered to voice their hostility towards slavery by using the public sphere. Abolitionists focused mainly on changing the views of the public on slavery by publishing pamphlets, gathering signatures...
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...in today’s world is the social and economic inequalities leading up to the American Revolution. The cause of the Revolution was due to many of the grievances that colonists had for the British. Knowing this fact, we can better understand how this is useful and relevant in understanding the economic inequalities in Egypt which led to the Revolution in 2011. The American Revolution was fought because of numerous unresolved conflicts that the colonists had with the British. Even after the war, there were problems still lingering. Some of these issues included freedom of expression, voting rights and political participation, and the Inflation of goods. Many of these disagreements resulted in rioting and protests, as well as boycotting of goods and such. Let’s start with freedom of expression. Speech was limited in Britain, but if referring to the boundary outside of Parliament, then there was no legal protection for freedom of speech. Moreover, an individual could be beheaded for criticizing the king and the government. Even before the Revolution, voting rights and the political participation was very limited when electing government officials. There were property qualifications in order to vote in America. For example, “nearly every adult male could meet the voting qualification of fifty acres of land”. This meant that only the rich or middle class had any say in politics during this time. After the Revolution, the states became more lenient in the voting rights by allowing all...
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...Presidential Elections Andres B. Ronquillo HIST122A 15 July 2012 Our nation’s first presidential election took place in 1789, when Americans voted for electors and they voted for Washington, who ran and won without much opposition. However, it is 2012 and it has been over 200 years since that first election took place. Many things have changed since then, including the election process its self. I am not going to get into much detail about the process, Instead I will focus this paper on the changes we, as a nation, went through. I will focus more on the issues that have changed us the most, as a nation. Through the course of this class I have learned that some of the issues we have had in the past were based on race, gender, illiteracy and even poverty. I will touch on some of these issues but only briefly. Instead I will talk about present day presidential elections and how even though we have changed a lot of the major issues that affected the election process, there are still many issues that still affect us today. I will mainly focus on one of these issues. The Problems I will discuss will be focused around the military vote, mainly because I am in the Army and have friends/ family that are in the military. The problems with the absentee ballot system, are part of the issues I will discuss. It will be four years, in November, since President Obama was elected as our nation’s 44th President. Just like in 2008 and every other Presidential election year, we the people...
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...government. To better understand this claim, it’s imperative to first analyze the origins of Colonial America. A question that ought to be asked is, why colonize? It was no doubt a risky endeavor by the British Commonwealth. Some critics, such as Christopher Columbus, would argue that it was due to religious attempts to expand Faith. It was in fact, something entirely different - power. It was a power move for the English leaders to encourage colonization in the New World. Eric Foner said it best, “National power and glory, they argued,...
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...Roll”, week 6). Because many Americans were members of the different movements in the counterculture, the counterculture influenced American society. As a result of the achievements the counterculture movements made, the United States in the 1960s became a more open, more tolerant, and a freer country. One of the most powerful counterculture movements in the sixties was the civil rights movement. In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act to end racial discrimination in employment, institutions like hospitals and schools, and privately owned public accommodations. In 1965, congress returned suffrage to black southerners, by passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Foner 2009). In the case of Loving v. Virginia (1967), the Supreme Court ruled that laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional(Foner 2009) . Because of the civil rights movement in the sixties, minorities gained more rights than they had prior to the 1960s. During this time, a group of writers became known for jump-starting the rebellion of the youth culture. They were called the Beats and symbolized underground non-conformist youth. Parts of this group were a group of writers who became prominent in the late 1950s and early 60s. Obscenity trials were brought against some of the publicized works that were written. The trials helped to liberate the kinds of books that could be legally published in the U.S (lect., “Sex, Drugs, and Rock and...
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...As well as the presidential contest between Theodore Roosevelt, who was a candidate from the Progressive party, and William Howard Taft, a Republican. Both believed that, "...increased government action was necessary to preserve individual freedom, but they differed about the dangers of increasing the government's power and the inevitability of economic concentration" (Foner, 100). Even though they had different opinions, their beliefs about preserving individual freedom were the base to society. Theodore Roosevelt was also known for being a "trust buster" because he found a way to regulate the conomy and to gain businessmen's trust at the same time. He created a regulatory program that included the Hepburn Act, which was passed by the congress and consisted in examinating the railroads to make sure they had reasonable rates. Also, Roosevelt created the Pure Food and Drug Act which "...established a federal agency to police the equality and labeling of food and drugs" (Foner, 706), and the Meat Inspection Act, which was basically the same as the Pure Food and Drug Act, but with meat. It can be concluded that the Progressive Era was one of the most revolutionary times in American History, because most of the changes made at that time remain equal or almost equal in today's american system, if not all of...
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...Southern whites tried to maintain their status quo of supremacy. The following will describe techniques that the southern whites used in an effort to keep the south as it was in the antebellum. Laws were enacted to protect the civil rights of the freed people and those born in the United States. In some case these laws were stricken down by the Supreme Court. Laws were also created in the south to minimize the freedoms of the newly freed people. These laws were called “Black Codes” and “Jim Crow Laws.” In America’s south was the first domestic terrorist group the Ku Klux Klan which started as a social club in Tennessee. This paper will describe some of the issues that started in the nineteenth century and carry on today. In the south the wealthy and politically connected white people refused to let go of their way of life after the Civil War. The southerners did all they could to maintain a status quo. In their minds the war did not change anything. After the Civil War the white southern power structure used the following techniques to make the exercise of freedom for the former slaves challenging. The first technique I will discuss is a political fashion when the local and state governments in the south instituted Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes. Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes limited black Americans’ capacity to dispute inequalities. Essentially the former slaves were now free from slavery; however these instituted laws of inequality...
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...At the beginning of the book, The Fiery Trial, Eric Foner states that he isn’t writing another biography on the 16th president but instead he’s taking a deep look inside Lincoln’s viewpoints on slavery. Foner starts off by examining Lincoln’s early life from the day he was born in Kentucky in 1809. Lincoln spent 7 years in Kentucky until his family moved across the Ohio river to southwestern Indiana. Then by the time he was 21, Lincoln ended up moving again to central Illinois with his father and family. Lincoln would live in Illinois and became the United States president in 1861. Foner also gives background information that helps build the environment in which Lincoln was born into and grew up in. By the time, Lincoln was born about one-fifth of Kentucky’s population was accounted by slaves. Some of Lincoln’s relatives owned slaves such as his father’s uncle, Isaac, who owned forty-three when he died in 1834. Although Lincoln had some relatives who were slave owners, his parents didn’t support the institution of slavery and joined an antislavery congregation in their church. The white’s living in Kentucky all agreed that they didn’t want to have a free black population and so in 1808, a year before Lincoln was born, the legislature prohibited the migration of free blacks to...
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...European goods, new colonists, and war alliances. Only 55 years after the peaceful encounters in Plymouth, “the bloodiest and most bitter conflict occurred in Southern New England” (Foner 87). Colonists settling on Indian lands was becoming a problem and some Indians began to believe that settlers were wearing out their welcome. King Philip’s War led to Indians ransacking and burning around half of Massachusetts towns and killing around 1,000 colonists. However, colonists soon counterattacked and destroyed the Indian alliance. The outcome of “King Philip’s War produced a broadening of freedom for the white New Englanders by expanding their access to land” (Foner 87)....
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