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Lecture 22 - Constitutional Crisis and Impeachment of a President
FromHIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877
Lecture 22 - Constitutional Crisis and Impeachment of a President
FromHIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877
ratings:
Length:
20 minutes
Released:
Aug 25, 2017
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Professor Blight continues his discussion of the political history of Reconstruction. The central figure in the early phase of Reconstruction was President Andrew Johnson. Under Johnson's stewardship, southern whites held constitutional conventions throughout 1865, drafting new constitutions that outlawed slavery but changed little else. When the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress reassembled late in 1865, they put a stop to Johnson's leniency and inaugurated Radical (or Congressional) Reconstruction, a process that resulted in the immediate passage of the Civil Rights bill and the Fourteenth Amendment, and the eventual passage of four Reconstruction Acts. The Congressional elections in 1866 and Johnson's disastrous "Swing Around the Circle" speaking tour strengthened Radical control over Congress. Each step of the way, Johnson did everything he could to obstruct Congressional Reconstruction, setting the stage for his impeachment in 1868. TranscriptLecture Page
Released:
Aug 25, 2017
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (27)
Lecture 2 - Southern Society: Slavery, King Cotton, and Antebellum America's "Peculiar" Region: Professor Blight offers a number of approaches to the question of southern distinctiveness. The lecture offers a survey of that manner in which commentators--American, foreign, northern, and southern--have sought to make sense of the nature of southern society and southern history. The lecture analyzes the society and culture of the Old South, with special emphasis on the aspects of southern life that made the region distinct from the antebellum North. The most lasting and influential sources of Old South distinctiveness, Blight suggests, were that society's anti-modernism, its emphasis on honor, and the booming slave economy that developed in the South from the 1820s to the 1860s. Transcript Lecture Page by HIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877