Freedom Under the Confiscation Act: What One Man’s Freedom Papers Tell Us About Black Resistance to Slavery
There was emancipation even before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The March 1862 Confiscation Act allowed the Union Army to free slaves who had been…
British Newspaper The Guardian on Kevin Levin’s “Searching for Black Confederates”
Kevin Levin’s new book Searching for Black Confederates continues to garner interest in the press. The British paper The Guardan has an article on it today….
“We Must Escape Equality With the Negroes” The Fondest Hope for White Virginians in the New Year of 1869
The reason for opposing the Reconstruction of Virginia was the forced integration of the races, according to this article in the Petersburg Daily Express. The…
Greg Downs Interviewed on His Book “After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War” a Great Book on the U.S. Army in the South After the War
Greg Downs wrote a great book a few years ago After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War. I will be publishing a review…
Ku Klux Klan Appeared at 1867 Version of a Renaissance Faire in Tennessee
One of the odder events one encounters in reading Southern newspapers of the Reconstruction Era is the propensity of elite whites to organize Medieval–style tournaments…
New Podcast from NY Times 1619 Project on African American Land Ownership During Reconstruction & Jim Crow
The new 1619 podcast from The New York Times looks at the struggle by freed slaves to obtain land after emancipation and the continuing effort…
Too Great a Burden to Bear: The Struggle and Failure of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas by Christopher B. Bean
Too Great a Burden to Bear: The Struggle and Failure of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas by Christopher B. Bean published by Fordham University Press (2016)…
How Successful Were Southern States at Encouraging Chinese Immigrants to Move to the Region?
During the Reconstruction Era there were a number of schemes hatched by white plantation owners and industrialists to increase immigration to the region. The attempts…
White Immigrants Needed to Replace the Dying Black Race Alabama January 1869
Many Southern newspapers, which had once mocked the Union army as filled with immigrants, came out in favor of encouraging immigration to the South after…
“The White Race of the South Will Constitute One Army” Attacking Reconstruction November 1868
No Southern newspaper did more to encourage secession in 1860 than the Charleston Mercury. After the war, it became a fiery opponent of Reconstruction and…