Reconstruction Politics 1865 - 1877 Years following the Civil War (1861 – 1865)
Contested Visions: The Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
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Transcript of Contested Visions: The Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
Contested Visions: The Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
Fort Sumter (symbolic beginning of war)
Union and Confederate Strategies
• Matching military tactics to political realities• Confederacy ignored possibility of war of
attrition – the successful model offered by Patriots in 1776
• Lincoln recognized the need to take the war to the South dramatically
• Conflict initially defined as a war to restore the Union rather than an anti-slavery crusade
Turning Points/Missed Opportunities of the Civil War
• As argued by historian James McPherson• Summer 1862 – Peninsular Campaign• Fall 1862 – First Confederate invasion of North• Summer/Fall 1863 – Confederacy permanently
on the defensive• Summer 1864 – Fall of Atlanta and Lincoln’s
re-election
Summer 1862
Fall of 1862 – Battles of Antietam and Perryville
Summer/Fall 1863
Summer 1864 – Sherman’s Heyday
Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse(April 1865)
Consequences of the War
Reconstruction
• Began with high hopes for social and political activism on behalf of freed slaves
• Limited by white southern resistance, political corruption, and northern apathy
• Left African-Americans in a distinctly second-class status that would continue into the 1950s-1970s
Freedman’s Bureau
Fifteenth Amendment
Reconstruction Act of 1867
End of Reconstruction – How much has really changed?
Primary sources useful for paper assignments on Reconstruction
• Wade-Davis manifesto against Lincoln’s Reconstruction policy (1864)
• Article entitled “Reconstruction” by Frederick Douglass (1866)
• Appeal to Congress for African-American voting rights by Frederick Douglass (1867)
• Call for moderation by John Sherman (1867)• Southern Republican assessment by Albion
Tourgee (1879)
Primary sources useful for paper assignments on prosecution of war
• Harrison’s Landing letter from George McClellan to Lincoln (July 1862)
• Emancipation Proclamation by Lincoln (1862)• Gettysburg Address by Lincoln (1863)• Grant’s account of first meeting with Lincoln
(1864)Comments on necessity of holding elections by Lincoln (1864)