Author: Patrick Young
What Everyone Should Know About Reconstruction
There is an article that originally appeared on The Conversation which is now getting republished on a number of sites, most recently on Salon. Authored…
National Military Asylums Cared for 4,000 Disabled Veterans in 1868
After the Civil War, hundreds of thousands of men were left suffering from war wounds, or were still afflicted by diseases contracted in the service….
Reconstruction Era Virginia Village of Willisville Settled by Freed Slaves Placed on National Register of Historic Places
The African American settlement of Willisville in Loudoun County Virginia was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in December. Willisville was a free Black…
Congratulating Virginia for Rejecting Black Citizenship Under the 14th Amendment January 1867
On January 9, 1867 Virginia rejected the proposed 14th Amendment. The Amendment granted United States citizenship to anyone born in the United States, including former…
Book Review-Collective Amnesia: American Apartheid: African Americans’ 400 Years in North America, 1619–2019 by Eugene DeFriest Bétit (2019)
Collective Amnesia: American Apartheid: African Americans’ 400 Years in North America, 1619–2019 by Eugene DeFriest Bétit (2019) This recent book by Eugene Betit traces the…
“Of the structure of government…he is singularly and wonderfully ignorant” Gideon Welles on U.S. Grant
When Ulysses S. Grant was elected president on November 3, 1868, one jaundice-eyed observer of the chief executive-elect was Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy Gideon…
Woodrow Wilson Home in South Carolina to Include Story of Reconstruction and Jim Crow
The Woodrow Wilson Home in Columbia, South Carolina, is reopening after a years-long retoration. The home was once used as a shrine to the late…
William Seward Takes a Train Ride With President Elect Grant Nov. 1868
I found this story charming and telling. William Seward and Gideon Welles were the most prominent men in Andy Johnson’s cabinet in 1868. Johnson had…
Harriet Jacobs Describes Her Relief Work Among Liberated Former Slaves Near Savannah in 1866
Illustration: Freedpeople in Charleston from Frank Leslie’s April 25, 1865. Harriet Jacobs is today well-known as the author of Incidents in the Life of a…
“The main reliance…must be upon the black population” Coming to terms with free Black labor 1868
The Richmond Whig was a staunch opponent of Republican Reconstruction plans, but as this article indicates it could be realistic in its assessment of the…