Reconstruction : voices from America's first great struggle for racial equality / Brooks D. Simpson, editor.
2018
E668 .R4245 2018eb
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Details
Title
Reconstruction : voices from America's first great struggle for racial equality / Brooks D. Simpson, editor.
ISBN
9781598535631 (electronic book)
1598535633 (electronic book)
9781598535556
1598535552
1598535633 (electronic book)
9781598535556
1598535552
Published
New York : Library of America, 2018.
Copyright
©2018
Language
English
Description
1 online resource (xxix, 778 pages)
Call Number
E668 .R4245 2018eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
973.8
Summary
The violent aftermath of the Civil War comes to dramatic life in this sweeping new collection of firsthand writing There are few periods in American history more consquential but less understood than Reconstruction, the tumultuous twelve years after Appomattox, when the battered nation sought to reconstitute itself and confront the legacy of two centuries of slavery. This Library of America anthology brings together more than one hundred contemporary letters, diary entries, interviews, petitions, testimonies, and newspaper and magazine articles by well-known figures-Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Andrew Johnson, Thaddeus Stevens, Ulysses S. Grant, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mark Twain, Albion Tourgee-as well as by dozens of ordinary men and women, black and white, northern and southern, to tell the story of our nation's first attempt to achieve racial equality. Through their eyes readers experience the fierce contest between President Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans resulting in the nation's first presidential impeachment; the adoption of the revolutionary Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; the first achievements of black political power; and the murderous terrorism of the Klan and other groups that, combined with northern weariness, indifference, and hostility, eventually resulted in the restoration of white supremacy in the South. Throughout, Americans confront the essential questions left unresolved by the defeat of secession: What system of labor would replace slavery, and what would become of the southern plantations' Would the war end in the restoration of a union of sovereign states, or in the creation of a truly national government' What would citizenship mean after emancipation, and what civil rights would the freed people gain' Would suffrage be extended to African American men, and to all women'
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
Added Author
Simpson, Brooks D., editor.
Series
Library of America ; 303.
Available in Other Form
Print version: 1598535552
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