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Class Date: December 10th
Location: Your couch! See your weekly e-mail for Zoom link!
Ladies and the Lost Cause
Ladies and the Lost Cause
1852 - Uncle Tom’s Cabin published
Harriet Beecher Stowe published her literary masterpiece on slavery, further fanning the flames of abolitionist passions. Readers in the South denounced the book for its vivid depictions of slavery, but the novel continued to gain acclaim in the North and in Great Britain. It was adapted for the theater multiple times, beginning soon after the book was published, playing for sold-out audiences.
1856 - The first railroad train crosses the Mississippi River
Crowds gathered and bands played in Rock Island, Illinois and Davenport, Iowa, as a train crossed the first railroad bridge to span the Mississippi River. The bridge would actually foreshadow many political adversaries in the months to come: Jefferson Davis attempted to halt construction of the bridge in Illinois, arguing that a more southern route through St. Louis would be more beneficial. Davis failed to stop construction, but shortly after the bridge was completed, a steamboat owner crashed his steamboat into a bridge piling, setting his boat and the bridge on fire. Though the crash was almost certainly deliberate, as steamboat owners fought railroad expansion, the steamboat owners sued the railroad for damages. The railroads brought in railroad attorney Abraham Lincoln to successfully argue that the bridge did not impede boat traffic and railroad bridges were needed to settle the West.
1862 - September 17 - Battle of Antietam, Maryland
The single bloodiest day of the Civil War, General Lee’s first invasion into the North comes to an end. After the Union victory, President Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing enslaved people located in the Confederate States. The Proclamation did not free enslaved persons in bordering Union States, so slavery was still not officially ended until after the war.
January 16, 1865 - Forty Acres and a Mule
General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Field Order No. 15 to redistribute roughly 400,00 acres of confiscated land in Lowcountry Georgia and South Carolina. He divided the land into 40 acre plots for newly freed Black families and white southern unionists. After the war, President Andrew Johnson returned most of the last to former white slave owners.
1865 - April 9 - Battle of Appomattox Court House and Surrender
After an early morning defeat, Lee seeks to meet with General Grant to discuss terms of surrender. In the afternoon, in Wilmer McLean’s parlor, Lee signs documents surrendering and ending the Civil War.
1865 - The Ku Klux Klan beings
A group of former Confederate veterans founded a ‘social club’ in Pulaski, Tennessee. This newly formed terrorist organization was meant to establish an ‘Invisible Empire of the South’. They selected former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest as their first leader. Klan membership peaked in the 1920s, with more than 4 million members of the hate group.
1866 - Civil Rights Act
The first federal law recognizing the definition of citizenship and extending equal protection to all citizens. The main goal of the Act was to protect civil rights for recently freed Black people living in the United States in the wake of the Civil War. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the act, but a ⅔ majority in each chamber overrode the veto to pass the Act. While the act made it illegal to discriminate against Black citizens, enforcement has historically been difficult to secure.
1866 - White mob attacks Louisiana Constitutional Convention
Frustrated that the Louisiana Constitution did not extend voting rights to Black people, Progressive Republicans, with a mix of Black and white men, convened a convention to discuss reform. After the meeting, they met a group of Black marchers with a band. An armed group of whites set on the group, ultimately killing approximately 50 people, almost all of them Black.
1869 - John Willis Menard is the first Black man elected to Congress, but he is never seated
John Willis Menard ran in a special election to succeed the late James Mann, who represented New Orleans in the House of Representatives. Though Menard received 64% of the vote, his opponent, Caleb Hunt, contested the election. The House deemed that neither candidate was qualified and left the seat vacant for the remainder of the session.
1870-1871 - The Force Acts
Also known as the Klu Klux Klan Acts, these Force Acts were passed by Congress in an attempt to combat the terrorist organization’s disruption of Black voting and increasing violence against Black citizens. The acts placed national elections under the control of the federal government and empowered the president to use armed forces to combat those who would deny Constitutional rights.
1881 - Tennessee votes to segregate railroad passenger cars
Often marked as the beginning of Jim Crow laws across the South, the law codified segregated train travel. Over the next decade, most southern states would enact similar laws.
1881 - Tuskegee University founded
The beginning of this Historically Black Colleges and University (HBCU) can actually be credited to Lewis Adams, a formerly enslaved man, who never received a day of formal education, though he could read and write. W.F. Foster was running for Alabama Senate reelection and asked Adams to help him with the support of the Black community. Instead of asking for money, Adams asked that Foster help establish an educational institution for the Black population. To read more about this and how they recruited Booker T. Washington to teach at the Institute, click here:
https://www.tuskegee.edu/about-us/history-and-mission
1883 - Civil Rights Cases
5 legal cases were combined by the Supreme Court (due to their similarity). The Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional. The Court held that the 13th and 14th Amendments did not allow Congress to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals. Effectively, this ruling gave Congress very little power to legislate against segregation. It paved the way for decades of Jim Crow laws and inequality.
1912 - Booker T. Washington convinces Sears & Roebuck magnate to help build schools for Black children
After Julius Rosenwald successfully turned Sears, Roebuck, & Company from a small mail order business to the largest merchandiser in the country, he turned to philanthropy. Booker T. Washington joined with him to help build 6 new schools for Black children in Alabama. Rosenwald was so impressed with their success that he sought to expand the program. Working closely with Washington, he created a fund to help communities build more “Rosenwald Schools” across the South. To read more, click here: https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/culture/remembering-the-rosenwald-schools_o
That is where our timeline leaves us for this week! Check below for additional reading resources and check your e-mail for a link to this week’s lecture!
Recommended Reading
Recommended Reading
To read more about this period, here are some great books to get you started:
For kids:
White Lies: How the South Lost the Civil War Then Rewrote the History by Ann Bausum
Warning: This is not your average U.S. history book.
After the Civil War, the Confederates may have laid down their arms, but they were far from accepting defeat. By warping the narrative around what really happened during and after the Civil War, they created an alternate history now known as the Lost Cause. These lies still manifest today through criticism of Critical Race Theory, book banning, unequal funding for education, and more.
This book sets the record straight and explains the true history of the Civil War, and its complex and far-reaching aftermath. Written by historian and award-winning author Ann Bausum, WHITE LIES is an impeccably researched chronicle filled with photos, robust back matter, additional resources, and more that fans of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States will enjoy.
Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule by Harriette Gillem Robinet
Winner of the 1999 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction
A CBC Notable Children’s Book in the Field of Social Studies
Two recently freed, formerly enslaved brothers work to protect the new life they’ve built during the Reconstruction after the Civil War in this vibrant, illustrated middle grade novel.
Maybe nobody gave freedom, and nobody could take it away like they could take away a family farm. Maybe freedom was something you claimed for yourself.
Like other ex-slaves, Pascal and his older brother Gideon have been promised forty acres and maybe a mule. With the found family they have built along the way, they claim a place of their own.
Green Gloryland is the most wonderful place on earth, their own farm with a healthy cotton crop and plenty to eat. But the notorious night riders have plans to take it away, threatening to tear the beautiful freedom that the two boys are enjoying for the first time in their young lives.
For adults:
Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture by Karen L. Cox
Even without the right to vote, members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy proved to have enormous social and political influence throughout the South―all in the name of preserving Confederate culture. Karen Cox traces the history of the UDC, an organization founded in 1894 to vindicate the Confederate generation and honor the Lost Cause. In this edition, with a new preface, Cox acknowledges the deadly riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, showing why myths surrounding the Confederacy continue to endure.
The Daughters, as UDC members were popularly known, were daughters of the Confederate generation. While southern women had long been leaders in efforts to memorialize the Confederacy, UDC members made the Lost Cause a movement about vindication as well as memorialization. They erected monuments, monitored history for "truthfulness," and sought to educate coming generations of white southerners about an idyllic past and a just cause―states' rights. Soldiers' and widows' homes, perpetuation of the mythology of the antebellum South, and pro-southern textbooks in the region's white public schools were all integral to their mission of creating the New South in the image of the Old. UDC members aspired to transform military defeat into a political and cultural victory, in which states' rights and white supremacy remained intact. To the extent they were successful, the Daughters helped to preserve and perpetuate an agenda for the New South that included maintaining the social status quo.
Placing the organization's activities in the context of the postwar and Progressive-Era South, Cox describes in detail the UDC's origins and early development, its efforts to collect and preserve manuscripts and artifacts and to build monuments, and its later role in the peace movement and World War I. This remarkable history of the organization presents a portrait of two generations of southern women whose efforts helped shape the social and political culture of the New South. It also offers a new historical perspective on the subject of Confederate memory and the role southern women played in its development.
The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won by Edward H. Bonekemper III
The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won by Edward H. Bonekemper III
The former Confederate states have continually mythologized the South’s defeat to the North, depicting the Civil War as unnecessary, or as a fight over states’ Constitutional rights, or as a David v. Goliath struggle in which the North waged total war” over an underdog South. In The Myth of the Lost Cause, historian Edward Bonekemper deconstructs this multi-faceted myth, revealing the truth about the war that nearly tore the nation apart 150 years ago.
Works Cited
Works Cited
https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393634167
april-22-1856https://www.thoughtco.com/timeline-from-1850-to-1860-1774039
https://www.history.com/news/reconstruction-timeline-steps
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/focus/what.html
https://www.history.com/news/nat-turner-rebellion-literacy-slavery
https://www.thoughtco.com/african-american-history-timeline-1930-1939-45427
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