When Southern Whites Boycotted and Blacks Embraced the Fourth of July During Reconstruction
Many Americans are familiar, at least with the title, with Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” What they…
Kevin Levin Tells the Real Story of the Black Men Confederates Brought to Gettysburg (They were slaves, not “Black Confederates”)
One of the more troubling manifestations of modern Civil War memory is the development of the Black Confederate Myth. Kevin Levin has an interesting article…
Miscegenation Waltz: Fined $50 for Marrying a Black Woman July 1866
Before most Southern states began rebuilding their damaged infrastructure or taking care of their crippled veterans right after the Civil War, their legislatures busied themselves…
Podcast Reenactment of Frederick Douglass “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” With David Blight
Here is a neat podcast re-enactment of Frederick Douglass’s famous speech “What to the Slave is the 4th of July” delivered in Rochester, NY in…
“Plessy v. Ferguson” Had Its Roots in the Destruction of Reconstruction: Article by David Cole
David Cole, national legal director of the ACLU and a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, has an interesting article in The Nation on the…
Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior to Southern Redeemer by Rod Andrew, Jr.
Wade Hampton: Confederate Warrior to Southern Redeemer by Rod Andrew, Jr. published by University of North Carolina Press (2008) Hardcover $47.50 Paperback $26.00 Kindle $9.99….
David Blight on the Centrality of the 14th Amendment to Reconstruction’s Legacy
Several years ago Pulitzer Prize winning historian David Blight published an essay in The Atlantic on the centrality of the 14th Amendment that is well…
Podcast: Chris Hayes Interviews Biographer Brenda Wineapple on the Andrew Johnson Impeachment
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes interviews author Brenda Wineapple on the Andrew Johnson impeachment. Wineapple is the author of the new book The Impeachers: The Trial of…
Opposing the Black Codes in 1865: South Carolina African Americans Speak Out
After the surrender of the Confederate armies between April and June 1865, President Andrew Johnson remarkably left state and local governments in the hands of…
Video Lecture: The Andrew Johnson Impeachment in Popular Culture
C-SPAN has an interesting lecture by Brook Thomas of UC Irvine on the depictions of the Johnson Impeachment during the first 60 years of the…