Books with title The Reconstruction Era

Learn why the Reconstruction was such a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the United States, and the great effort it took to transform the south and free the slaves. This title offers primary sources, Fast facts and sidebars, prompts and activities, and more. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Core Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing Company.

Young learners will be introduced to an important stage in history when they read The Reconstruction Era. This book is filled with photographs, interesting facts, discussion questions, and more, to effectively engage young learners in such a significant re-telling of events. Each 48-page title in The History Of America Collection delves into complex narratives in history. Concise, but comprehensive, these titles are very approachable for transitioning readers and learners beginning to recognize detail orientation and how to analyze text. Each book in this series features photographs, timelines, discussion questions, and more, to fully engage transitioning readers. The History Of America Collection engages students in major historical events with fascinating facts, photographs, and more. Readers are able to gauge their own understanding with before-reading questions that help build background knowledge and end-of-book comprehension and extension activities.

The Facts of Reconstruction is John Roy Lynch's fascinating and detailed account of the USA's political situation following the conclusion of the American Civil War. As a Speaker in the Mississippi House of Representatives, John R. Lynch was one of the first-ever black politicians. As such, the victory of the Union forces in 1865 directly influenced his life and career. Simply by virtue of emancipation, Lynch was a major stakeholder in the reconstruction efforts between the Union north and the secessionist south. He consequently felt obliged to author this retrospective history covering the major political events and turning points. Immediately after the American Civil War concluded, the USA was in a fractured and fraught state. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln, who sought to mend bridges and reconcile with the secessionist states, exacerbated the situation further. The 1860s, 1870s and 1880s were thus a tumultuous time for American politics, in which reforms were hard fought and incremental in the various states and nationally at the federal level. Writing in 1913, Lynch charts the journey made over those difficult decades, drawing on his personal experience as a member of Mississippi's House of Representatives, and the national record. He charts the various elections, and the evolution of the Republican and Democratic parties as distinct wings of the political landscape. Various events, such as the rise of Democratic radicalism in the South, and the election of Grover Cleveland to the Presidency, are detailed. In all, The Facts of Reconstruction offers a reasonable overview of a transitional period in U.S. politics from an insider. The ongoing racial conflicts following the emancipation of African American slaves are charted alongside the personal traits, ideals and acts of the various politicians of the time.

The author of this American history text, The Facts of Reconstruction, has endeavored to present facts of Reconstruction as they were and are, rather than as he would like to have them, and to set them down without the slightest regard to their effect upon the public mind, except so far as that mind may be influenced by the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In his efforts along these lines he has endeavored to give expression to his ideas, opinions and convictions in language that is moderate and devoid of bitterness, and entirely free from race prejudice, sectional animosity, or partisan bias. The Reconstruction era was the period from 1863 (the legal end of most slavery in the United States) or 1865 (the end of the Confederacy) to 1877. In the context of the history of the United States, the term has two applications: the first applies to the complete history of the entire country from 1865 to 1877 following the Civil War; the second, to the attempted transformation of the 11 ex-Confederate states from 1863 to 1877, as directed by Congress. Reconstruction ended the remnants of Confederate nationalism and of slavery, making the Freedmen citizens with civil rights apparently guaranteed by three new Constitutional amendments. Three visions of Civil War memory appeared during Reconstruction: the reconciliationist vision, which was rooted in coping with the death and devastation the war had brought; the white supremacist vision, which included terror and violence; and the emancipationist vision, which sought full freedom, citizenship, and Constitutional equality for African Americans.[2] Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson both took moderate positions designed to bring the South back into the union as quickly as possible, while Radical Republicans in Congress sought stronger measures to upgrade the rights of African Americans, including the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, while curtailing the rights of former Confederates, such as through the provisions of the Wade–Davis Bill. Johnson, a former Tennessee Senator and former slave owner, followed a lenient policy toward ex-Confederates. Lincoln’s last speeches show that he was leaning toward supporting the enfranchisement of all freedmen, whereas Johnson was opposed to this.[3] Johnson’s interpretations of Lincoln’s policies prevailed until the Congressional elections of 1866. Those elections followed outbreaks of violence against blacks in the former rebel states, including the Memphis riots of 1866 and the New Orleans riot that same year. The subsequent 1866 election gave Republicans a majority in Congress, enabling them to pass the 14th Amendment, take control of Reconstruction policy, remove former Confederates from power, and enfranchise the freedmen. A Republican coalition came to power in nearly all the southern states and set out to transform the society by setting up a free labor economy, using the U.S. Army and the Freedmen's Bureau. The Bureau protected the legal rights of freedmen, negotiated labor contracts, and set up schools and churches for them. Thousands of Northerners came south as missionaries, teachers, businessmen and politicians. Hostile whites began referring to these politicians as “carpetbaggers”. In early 1866, Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau and Civil Rights Bills and sent them to Johnson for his signature. The first bill extended the life of the bureau, originally established as a temporary organization charged with assisting refugees and freed slaves, while the second defined all persons born in the United States as national citizens with equality before the law. After Johnson vetoed the bills, Congress overrode his veto, making the Civil Rights Act the first major bill in the history of the United States to become law through an override of a presidential veto.