A Biography of America: Reconstruction
Companion site to documentary, be sure to check out maps, transcripts and "Webography" links to primary documents from Annenberg Media
08: Reconstruction
The Impeachment Trial of Andrew Johnson
Comprehensive collection of articles, artifacts and documents from the "Famous Trials" site at the University of Missouri - Kansas City
The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow | PBS
Jim Crow was not a person, yet affected the lives of millions of people. Named after a popular 19th-century minstrel song that stereotyped African Americans, "Jim Crow" came to personify the system of government-sanctioned racial oppression and segregation in the United States. Companion site for American Experience documentary. Includes timeline and extra information of people and events in film
The Battle Over Reconstruction: The Politics of Reconstruction | EDSITEment
This lesson plan will explore the clashes between the Radical Republicans in Congress and Presidents Lincoln and Johnson during the battles over direction of Reconstruction policy. It will also examine how these contentious divisions led to the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.
Reconstruction: Digital History
Here you will learn about President Lincoln’s and President Johnson’s plans to readmit the Confederate states to the Union; the more stringent Congressional plan; the struggle between President Johnson and Congress, including the impeachment vote; the Reconstruction era’s contributions to civil rights; the reasons for Reconstruction’s demise; and the emergence of sharecropping.
After Reconstruction - (Library of Congress)
In this lesson, students use the collection's Timeline of African American History, 1852-1925 to identify problems and issues facing African Americans immediately after Reconstruction. Working in small groups on assigned issues, students search the collection for documents that describe the problem and consider opposing points of view, and suggest a remedy for the problem. Students then present the results of their research in a simulated African American Congress, modeled on a congress documented in the collection's special presentation, Progress of a People.
African Americans After the Civil War Lesson Plan
This lesson examines the significant ramifications of emancipation in Southern society immediately following the Civil War.
Reconstruction
This lesson will introduce the main ideas of Reconstruction and examine the events that took place as the Civil War came to a close. Students will identify the problems facing the nation at this time, and evaluate different plans for dealing with these challenges.
Letters of Note: To My Old Master
In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdon Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdon — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated).
The Meaning of Emancipation in the Reconstruction Era
"This exercise focuses on the meaning and reality of emancipation for African Americans. How did life change for ex-slaves in the South during the Reconstruction era? What did emancipation mean to former slaves in terms of their hopes and expectations? What did emancipation mean in terms of the realities of their lives after the Civil War? Finally, if Reconstruction in some sense failed them, why? Was a greater degree of change possible given the players involved and the circumstances?"
Lesson 1: The Battle Over Reconstruction: The Aftermath of War | EDSITEment
Starting off by having students read Walt Whitman and Sherman's letter to Atlanta, this lesson has students analyze date rich maps of the south to look at the conditions after the war, then read primary source documents organized by state. This lesson will take a day or two, but will be well worth it.
Mississippi's Black Codes
A teacher doesn't ever have to talk about Black Codes, just have the students look through the text of the laws themselves. That should be enough. Just reading the first paragraph of Vagrancy should do it
How the South Won the Civil War - The New Yorker
This article speaks to an Essential Question of the Reconstruction unit - did the south "win" the Civil War?
Why Reconstruction Matters - The New York Times
Teachers can consider starting students in their Reconstruction unit with this article. Why not start with a popular writing piece that asks why a particular era in history is important?
eHistory - Projects - Mapping Occupation
Mapping Occupation, by Gregory P. Downs and Scott Nesbit, captures the regions where the United States Army could effectively act as an occupying force in the Reconstruction South. For the first time, it presents the basic nuts-and-bolts facts about the Army's presence, movements that are central to understanding the occupation of the South. That data in turn reorients our understanding of the Reconstruction that followed Confederate surrender. Viewers can use these maps as a guide through a complex period, a massive data source, and a first step in capturing the federal government's new reach into the countryside.
The Meaning of Emancipation in the Reconstruction Era
This exercise focuses on the meaning and reality of emancipation for African Americans. How did life change for ex-slaves in the South during the Reconstruction era? What did emancipation mean to former slaves in terms of their hopes and expectations? What did emancipation mean in terms of the realities of their lives after the Civil War? Finally, if Reconstruction in some sense failed them, why? Was a greater degree of change possible given the players involved and the circumstances?
Gold Price Board from Black Friday 1869
The culmination of Jay Gould's failed scheme to corner the Gold Market resulted in a collapse of the gold market on Sept 24, 1869 - this is the blackboard that tracked the price of gold on that day. Students who've seen the ":zipper" of stock prices on the bottom of TV screens may want to see what crude technology was used after the Civil War. The handwriting on the bottom of the board was written by James Garfield, chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee who investigated the scandal.
Mapping Occupation - Force Freedom and the Army in Reconstruction
Students learning about Reconstruction will confront the reality that from the start of the Civil War and through the 1870s, the U.S. Army remained the key institution that newly freed people in the South could access as they tried to defend their rights. This site allows viewers to explore the practical details of when and where the Union Army was, specifically, and in what numbers. Capitalizing on the digitization of a massive data collection from the National Archives and other repositories presents this history and geography in two ways: as a spatial narrative, guiding the user through key stages in the spatial history of the army in Reconstruction; and as an exploratory map. Students can be free to build their own narratives out of the data curated here.
Visualizing Emancipation
Visualizing Emancipation is a map of slavery’s end during the American Civil War. It finds patterns in the collapse of southern slavery, mapping the interactions between federal policies, armies in the field, and the actions of enslaved men and women on countless farms and city blocks. It encourages scholars, students, and the public to examine the wartime end of slavery in place, allowing a rigorously geographic perspective on emancipation in the United States.
The Reconstruction Era and the Fragility of Democracy | Facing History and Ourselves
Facing History's take on the Reconstruction Era
Veto of the Civil Rights Bill 1866 - Andrew Johnson
Whose Heritage? - Report on the history of Confederate monuments, Public works naming and iconography. Published by the Southern Poverty Law Center
Following the Charleston massacre, the Southern Poverty Law Center launched an effort to catalog and map Confederate place names and other symbols in public spaces, both in the South and across the nation. This study, while far from comprehensive, identified a total of 1,503. *44 page report more for teachers and scholars though some advanced students may be able to use it for research - Get the CHART
The Making and the Breaking of the Legend of Robert E. Lee - by Eri Foner
The heightened focus on Confederate monuments and history has brought with it opportunities for trained historians to explain the historiography of how the the past changes.
Teaching Reconstruction: Some Strategies That Work - The Journal of the Civil War Era
How Southern socialites rewrote Civil War history - YouTube
7 minute video that can provoke a high-level thinking conversation about public memory and history. It would be easy to how the evidence in this video points to the persistence of racism, and it would certainly be correct to do so. At the same, how would any society give meaning to so many dead?
Radical Reconstruction | Stanford History Education Group
After the defeat of the South in the Civil War, Radical Republicans put forward a plan to reshape Southern society. Their plan faced fierce opposition from Democrats and from President Andrew Johnson. In this lesson, students will read speeches by Thaddeus Stevens and Johnson in order to explore why the Radical Republican plan was considered so “radical” at the time.
Reconstruction SAC | Stanford History Education Group
The constitutional amendments passed during Reconstruction vastly expanded former slaves’ rights and opportunities. At the same time, the Black Codes passed in most Southern towns, cities, and states curtailed those rights and opportunities. The tension between African Americans’ federal and local rights raises questions about the impact of Reconstruction on the freedom of former slaves. In this structured academic controversy, students examine constitutional amendments, a Black Code, a personal account of a former slave, and other documents to answer the question: “Were African Americans free during Reconstruction?"
Cultural panic and overwhelming change: Richard White looks back on America’s first Gilded Age | Library of America
Mississippi Officially Abolishes Slavery, Ratifies 13th Amendment - ABC News
Full text of "Report on the Condition of the South"
In the summer of 1865, President Andrew Johnson sent Carl Schurz through the South to study conditions. Schurz's report, which suggested the readmission of the states with complete rights and the investigation of the need of further legislation by a Congressional committee, was ignored by the President. This document can be mined by teachers for DBQ material, or by students in original research