Alexandra Stern is a doctoral candidate in American History at Stanford University doing research on Native Americans during the Civil War and Reconstruction. She is one of a number of scholars who argue that Reconstruction was a national, rather than a strictly Southern, project. She was interviewed recently by the Stanford Humanities Center, where you will find the full interview.
From the interview:
How were the Indian Territories reconstructed during Reconstruction? Or deconstructed?
My dissertation argues that Reconstruction is a truly national rather than regional project. Reconstruction builds a unified American nation-state under the federal government that is committed to free labor, private property ownership, and a homogeneous citizenry.
Over the course of the nineteenth century, you see a fundamental shift away from recognizing Native nations’ sovereignty toward a view of Native peoples as wards of the state. Reconstruction is all about foreclosing on the idea of alternative polities—like the Confederacy—in the United States. The federal government seeks to do this in Indian Country by dismantling tribal governments and communal landholding practices, while forcing cultural assimilation.
Before the Civil War, whether secession is legal or not is hotly debated. The Civil War helps end that discussion. States cannot secede—and that’s the reality we live in now—but Native nations’ place within federalism is still being decided after 1865.
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