20 min listen
Lecture 25 - The "End" of Reconstruction: Disputed Election of 1876, and the "Compromise of 1877"
FromHIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877
Lecture 25 - The "End" of Reconstruction: Disputed Election of 1876, and the "Compromise of 1877"
FromHIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877
ratings:
Length:
20 minutes
Released:
Aug 25, 2017
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
This lecture focuses on the role of white southern terrorist violence in brining about the end of Reconstruction. Professor Blight begins with an account the Colfax Massacre. Colfax, Louisiana was the sight of the largest mass murder in U.S. history, when a white mob killed dozens of African Americans in the April of 1873. Two Supreme Court decisions would do in the judicial realm what the Colfax Massacre had done in the political. On the same day as the Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court offered a narrow reading of the 14th Amendment in the Slaughterhouse cases, signaling a judicial retreat from the radicalism of the early Reconstruction years. The Cruikshank case, two years later, would overturn the convictions of the only three men sentenced for their involvement in Colfax, and marked another step away from reconstruction. Professor Blight concludes with the Panic of 1873 and the seemingly innumerable political scandals of the Grant Administration, suggesting the manner in which these events encouraged northerners to tire of the Reconstruction experiment by the early 1870s. TranscriptLecture Page
Released:
Aug 25, 2017
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (27)
Lecture 1 - Introductions: Why Does the Civil War Era Have a Hold on American Historical Imagination?: Professor Blight offers an introduction to the course. He summarizes some of the course readings, and discusses the organization of the course. Professor Blight offers some thoughts on the nature of history and the study of history, before moving into a discussion of the reasons for Americans' enduring fascination with the Civil War. The reasons include: the human passion for epics, Americans' fondness for redemption narratives, the Civil War as a moment of "racial reckoning," the fascination with loss and lost causes, interest in military history, and the search for the origins of the modern United States. Transcript Lecture Page by HIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877