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The Reconstruction era was a period in United States history and Southern United States history that followed the American Civil War and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the abolition of slavery and the reintegration of the eleven former Confederate States of America into the United States. During this period, three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant citizenship and equal civil rights to the newly freed slaves. To circumvent these legal achievements, the former Confederate states imposed poll taxes and literacy tests and engaged in terrorism to intimidate and control people of color and to discourage or prevent them from voting.
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. government agency of early post American Civil War Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865, and operated briefly as a federal agency after the War, from 1865 to 1872, to direct provisions, clothing, and fuel for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children.
In United States history, the pejorative scalawag referred to white Southerners who supported Reconstruction policies and efforts after the conclusion of the American Civil War.
In the history of the United States, carpetbagger is a largely historical pejorative used by Southerners to describe allegedly opportunistic or disruptive Northerners who came to the Southern states after the American Civil War and were perceived to be exploiting the local populace for their own financial, political, or social gain. The term broadly included both individuals who sought to promote Republican politics and individuals who saw business and political opportunities because of the chaotic state of the local economies following the war. In practice, the term carpetbagger often was applied to any Northerners who were present in the South during the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877). The word is closely associated with scalawag, a similarly pejorative word used to describe native white Southerners who supported the Republican Party-led Reconstruction.
The Colfax massacre, sometimes referred to as the Colfax riot, occurred on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, the parish seat of Grant Parish. An estimated 62–153 Black militia men were murdered while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the Ku Klux Klan. Three White men also died during the confrontation.
Forty acres and a mule was part of Special Field Orders No. 15, a wartime order proclaimed by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman on January 16th, 1865, during the American Civil War, to allot land to some freed families, in plots of land no larger than 40 acres (16 ha). Sherman later ordered the army to lend mules for the agrarian reform effort. The field orders followed a series of conversations between Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Radical Republican abolitionists Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens following disruptions to the institution of slavery provoked by the American Civil War. Many freed people believed, after being told by various political figures, that they had a right to own the land they had been forced to work as slaves and were eager to control their own property. Freed people widely expected to legally claim 40 acres of land. However, Abraham Lincoln's successor as president, Andrew Johnson, tried to reverse the intent of Sherman's wartime Order No. 15 and similar provisions included in the second Freedmen's Bureau bills.
Oscar James Dunn served as Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana during the era of Reconstruction and was the first African American to act as governor of a U.S. state.
The Black Codes, sometimes called the Black Laws, were laws which governed the conduct of African Americans. In 1832, James Kent wrote that "in most of the United States, there is a distinction in respect to political privileges, between free white persons and free colored persons of African blood; and in no part of the country do the latter, in point of fact, participate equally with the whites, in the exercise of civil and political rights." Although Black Codes existed before the Civil War and although many Northern states had them, the Southern U.S. states codified such laws in everyday practice. The best known of these laws were passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War, in order to restrict African Americans' freedom, and in order to compel them to work for either low or no wages.
The New Orleans massacre of 1866 occurred on July 30, when a peaceful demonstration of mostly Black Freedmen was set upon by a mob of white rioters, many of whom had been soldiers of the recently defeated Confederate States of America, leading to a full-scale massacre. The violence erupted outside the Mechanics Institute, site of a reconvened Louisiana Constitutional Convention. According to the official report, a total of 38 were killed and 146 wounded, of whom 34 dead and 119 wounded were Black Freedmen. Unofficial estimates were higher. Gilles Vandal estimated 40 to 50 Black Americans were killed and more than 150 Black Americans wounded. Others have claimed nearly 200 were killed. In addition, three white convention attendees were killed, as was one white protester.
The American Missionary Association (AMA) was a Protestant-based abolitionist group founded on September 3, 1846 in Albany, New York. The main purpose of the organization was abolition of slavery, education of African Americans, promotion of racial equality, and spreading Christian values. Its members and leaders were of both races; the Association was chiefly sponsored by the Congregationalist churches in New England. The main goals were to abolish slavery, provide education to African Americans, and promote racial equality for free Blacks. The AMA played a significant role in several key historical events and movements, including the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement.
William Pitt Kellogg was an American lawyer and Republican Party politician who served as the governor of Louisiana from 1873 to 1877 and twice served as a United States senator during the Reconstruction era.
Henry Clay Warmoth was an American attorney and veteran Civil War officer in the Union Army who was elected governor and state representative of Louisiana. A Republican, he was 26 years old when elected as 23rd Governor of Louisiana, one of the youngest governors elected in United States history. He served during the early Reconstruction Era, from 1868 to 1872.
Benjamin Franklin Flanders was a teacher, politician and planter in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1867, he was appointed by the military commander as the 21st Governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction, a position which he held for some six months. He was the second and, as of 2024, the last Republican mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana.
This is a selected bibliography of the main scholarly books and articles of Reconstruction, the period after the American Civil War, 1863–1877.
The Republican Party of Louisiana(LAGOP) (French: Parti républicain de Louisiane, Spanish: Partido Republicano de Luisiana) is the affiliate of the Republican Party in the U.S. state of Louisiana. Its chair is Derek Babcock who was elected in 2024. It is currently the dominant party in the state, controlling all but one of Louisiana's six U.S. House seats, both U.S. Senate seats, all statewide executive offices, and both houses of the state legislature.
The civil rights movement (1865–1896) aimed to eliminate racial discrimination against African Americans, improve their educational and employment opportunities, and establish their electoral power, just after the abolition of slavery in the United States. The period from 1865 to 1895 saw a tremendous change in the fortunes of the Black community following the elimination of slavery in the South.
George Thompson Ruby was an African-American Republican politician in Reconstruction-era Texas. Born in New York to African-American businessman Reuben Ruby and Rachel Humphey and raised in Portland, Maine, he worked in Boston and Haiti before starting teaching in New Orleans before the end of the American Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln School was for freedmen and opened on October 3, 1865, in New Orleans on the campus of University of Louisiana after the American Civil War. It was featured on the cover of Harper's Weekly.
Louis Charles Roudanez (1823-1890) was an American physician and newspaper publisher. He cofounded L'Union (1862-1864), one of the first Black newspapers in the US South and the first bilingual (French-English) newspaper run by African Americans in the United States. After it folded, he cofounded La Tribune de la Nouvelle-Orleans (1864-1870), the nation's first daily Black newspaper, which was also bilingual.
Paul Trévigne was an American newspaperman and civil rights activist in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was editor of two black-owned newspapers, L'Union from 1862 until it closed in 1864, and then the New Orleans Tribune (1864-1870), the first black daily newspaper in the country.
References
- ↑ National Archives, online pdf
- ↑ Richardson, Joe M. (2009). Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861-1890. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 9780817355388 . Retrieved 24 February 2018.
- ↑ Schmidt, James D. (1998). Free to Work: Labor Law, Emancipation, and Reconstruction, 1815-1880. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 9780820320342 . Retrieved 24 February 2018.
- ↑ Annual Report of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, for the Year ... Wheeler and Williams. 1866. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
- ↑ Representatives, United States House of (1866). House Documents. U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved 24 February 2018.
- ↑ USAF, Major William H. Burks (2015). The Freedmen's Bureau, Politics, And Stability Operations During Reconstruction In The South. Pickle Partners Publishing. ISBN 9781782899297 . Retrieved 24 February 2018.
- 1 2 Houzeau, Jean-Charles (2001). My Passage at the New Orleans Tribune: A Memoir of the Civil War Era. LSU Press. ISBN 9780807167236 . Retrieved 24 February 2018.