Reconstruction

RECONSTRUCTION!! Confederate Military History, Volume 12 WARNING! This is not what you were taught in school. It has a definite Southern bias. It is not politically correct! Nor should it be. It was written shortly after the war by Southerners about Southerners. What is known as the reconstruction of the seceded States is a very [...]

Part II RECONSTRUCTION BY ANDREW JOHNSON President Andrew Johnson was of a different temperament from his predecessor--most combative, aggressive, and abusive to those who differed with him, and not a safe man for such a great emergency. While he was a great Union man, his ideas were generally Democratic rather than Republican, in that he [...]

Part III CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION        Congress had adjourned in March and left matters entirely in the hands of President Lincoln, so that when it met December 4, 1865, there had been a recess of over eight months, in which Presidents Lincoln and Johnson had had time to carry out their plans coincident with the rapid happening [...]

Part IV RETROSPECT At the close of this first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, which showed the great divergence between the executive and legislative branches of the government, and which also included the beginning of a darker and more revengeful period of reconstruction for the South, it is necessary to take a retrospective view of [...]

Part VIII FACTS, PHASES AND COLORINGS OF RECONSTRUCTION Besides trying to bring the law before the supreme court, prominent citizens in every State protested against the infamy. Among them may be mentioned H. V. Johnson, B. H. Hill, and others. When Governor Jenkins of Georgia issued an address to the people of the State, advising [...]

Part IX BORDER STATES        If anything, the border States of Maryland, Kentucky, West Virginia and Missouri, while passing through the same ordeal of adjustment, between war and peace, had a more revengeful and vindictive experience than the States which were reconstructed by Congress. The population of these States sympathized with the people of the South, [...]

Part XII SUMMARY The terrible ordeal of reconstruction may be said to have lasted from 1865 to 1876, twelve years, before the whites got hold of the States again. No people had to undergo so dark a period with such complications, having 4,000,000 of slaves suddenly enfranchised, with no preliminary training to fit them for [...]