Author: Patrick Young
Historian Sean Wilentz: The End of Slavery Was Anything But Inevitable
Historian Sean Wilentz has an interesting article in the New York Review of Books on how surprising the abolition of slavery was to most Americans…
O.O. Howard Explains Why He Supports Closing the Freedmen’s Bureau Dec. 1868
No white man is as associated with the Freedmen’s Bureau as O.O. Howard. The “Christian General” Howard was appointed Commissioner of the Bureau in May…
New Resource on Reconstruction Era Ku Klux Klan from Gilder-Lehrman Institute
The Gilder-Lehrman Institute has a new essay describing the rise and fall of the Reconstruction Era Ku Klux Klan. Elaine S. Frantz of Kent State…
What Klansmen Ate in 1868
The Memphis Avalanche was one of the most pro-KKK newspapers in the country. This article from the Avalanche is poking fun at African Americans and…
Three Million Have Seen “Harriet”-Here Are Biographies to Learn the Fuller Story
The film “Harriet,” about the life of Harriet Tubman, has been out for three weeks and over three million people have seen it in the…
After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War by Gregory Downs
After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War by Gregory Downs published by Harvard University Press (2015) Hardcover $32.95 Kindle $18.12. Before the 1960s, it…
Were the Ku Klux Ghosts of Confederate Soldiers? Mississippi 1868
This article announces the arrival of the KKK in Grenada, Miss. through the mockery of a black preacher. In the article “Uncle Ike” (older African…
Podcast: Why “Song of the South” Was More of a Success in the 1970s than the 1940s
The podcast Six Degrees of Song of the South looks at why a film that was only a moderate success when it first came out…
The KKK “Works Upon the Fears of the Colored People” NY Times Feb. 1868
The New York Times only first reported on the Klan in January 1868, but it soon became a regular topic of coverage. This article in…
When I Use the Word “Conservative” to Describe Some Opponents of Reconstruction, Am I Being “Anachronistic”?
When I write about the movement to block Reconstruction, I sometimes refer to Reconstruction’s opponents as “conservatives.” I have received a steady stream of criticism…