After Slavery: Educator Resources

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USHC Indicator 3.3

Analyze the effects of Reconstruction on the southern states and on the role of the federal government, including the impact of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments on opportunities for African Americans.

Unit 2: Freed Slaves Mobilize
Document 5: John T. Costin Reports on the Difficulties of Organizing
Document 6: A Union League Organizer Seeks permission to Bargain on the Behalf of Women and Children
Document 7: A Federal Officer Reports that Freedpeople are Organizing Military Companies on the South Carolina Sea Islands
Document 8: White Conservatives Complain that the Union Leagues are Organizing Labor Strikes South of Charleston
Document 9: A Charleston Newspaper on the 1868 Municipal Elections

Unit 3: Land and Labor
Document 1: Rufus B. Saxton Argues That Land Should Be Set Aside for Freedpeople
Document 2: Freedmen's Bureau Report on the Treatment of Plantation Laborers in Gates County, North Carolina
Document 3: A Freedpeople's Colony on Roanoke Island, North Carolina
Document 4: Rufus B. Saxton's Letter to Northern Planter Edward S. Philbrick
Document 5: General William T. Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15
Document 6: Freedpeople React to the Restoration of Land to their Former Masters
Document 7: Planter-Attorney William Whaley Wants to Exclude Blacks from the Land Board
Document 8: South Carolina's 'Black Code'
Document 9: A Desperate North Carolina Republican Appeals to Governor Holden for Land
Document 10: White Confederate Veterans Appeal to South Carolina's Land Commission
Document 11: A Freedpeople's 'Co-operative' in Colleton County, South Carolina

Unit 4: Freedom, Black Soldiers, and the Union Military
Document 6: Georgetown (S. C.) Whites Petition for the Removal of Black Troops
Document 7: Contrasting Attitudes toward Union Troops in the South Carolina Upcountry
Document 8: Black Troops, White Hostility, and Radicalization in the Upcountry
Document 9: Petition from Union County Republicans against Removal of Troops 

Unit 5: Conservatives Respond to Emancipation
Document 1: A White Texas Farmer Shoots a Freedman
Document 2: "The War is Not Over"
Document 3: D. F. Caldwell's Ideas for Economic Development in North Carolina
Document 4: 1865 North Carolina Constitutional Convention Responds to Freedpeople
Document 5: Wade Hampton's Advice to Confederate Veterans
Document 6: Judge A. P. Aldrich Removed from the Bench
Document 7: Wade Hampton's Advice to Freedpeople
Document 8: A Conservative Realizes the Mistakes of Earlier Policies
Document 9: Governor Jonathan Worth Argues Against 1867 Call for a Constitutional Convention
Document 10: Plato Durham Argues Against the Reconstruction Acts in the 1868 Constitutional Convention
Document 11: Dr. Pride Jones Agrees to Help Stop the Ku Klux Klan

Unit 6: Pursuing Citizenship, Justice, and Equality
Document 1: N.C. Planter Denying Schoolchildren Use of the Public Roads
Document 2: Whites Reclaim an Edisto Church from Freedpeople
Document 3: Report on Conditions in a North Carolina Jail
Document 4: Charleston Protests against Streetcar Segregation
Document 5: Harassment of Freedpeople in the Vicinity of Wilmington
Document 6: Columbia Democrats Debate Black Suffrage
Document 7: Sawmill Operator Tries to Prevent Employees from Voting the Radical Ticket
Document 8: The Difficulty of Obtaining Justice from Local Authorities
Document 9: North Carolina Conservatives Attempt to Frame a Union League Official
Document 10: Freedpeople Petition for the Removal of a Trial Justice
Document 11: Black Workers Petition Governor Scott against Extortion

Unit 7: Gender and the Politics of Freedom
Document 1: The Social and Domestic Price of Free Labor
Document 2: A Black Woman Imagines a Differently Gendered Working Class
Document 3: A Virginia Freedwoman Critiques the Gendered Nature of Freedom and Free Labor
Document 4: A Freedwoman's Civil and Domestic Expectations
Document 5: A Husband Shoulders a New, Free-Labor Duty
Document 6: The Problems of Family-based Labor
Document 7: Soldiering Men
Document 8: Clashing Ideas about Gender and Political Rights
Document 9: Playing Politics with GenderDocument 10: A Black Minister Proposes a Collective Solution to Freedom's Gendered Problems
Document 11: A Southern White Woman Reflects on New Circumstances, a New Identity

Unit 8: Planters, Poor Whites, and White Supremacy
Document 1: Sidney Andrews on Attitudes among North Carolina's Poor Whites
Document 2: J. B. Sitton's Petition for a Presidential Pardon
Document 3: North Carolina Constitutional Convention Protects Homesteads
Document 4: The Ku Klux Klan Attacks a White Man Assisting Blacks
Document 5: Matthew C. Butler - Planters React to Being Ignored by Government
Document 6: Belton O'Neall Townsend on 1876 Strategy
Document 7: A Description of Wade Hampton's Campaign
Document 8: T. D. Gwyn Argues Against the Fence Law
Document 9: South Carolina Greenbacker Explains His Opposition to Democrats

Unit 9: Coercion, Paramilitary, Terror, and Resistance
Document 1: Ex-Confederate Soldiers Terrorizing Union Men and Freedpeople in North Carolina
Document 2: Early Outrages against Freedpeople in South Carolina
Document 3: Hostility to Freedpeople and Federal Authorities in the South Carolina Upcountry
Document 4: Former Freedmen's Bureau Official Rufus B. Saxton on Freedpeople's Desire to Acquire Arms
Document 5: North Carolina Freedmen Seek Protection from Governor Holden
Document 6: Governor Scott is Warned of Impending Clashes in the South Carolina Upcountry
Document 7: A. M. E. Pastor S. B. Williams Reports Atrocities to Governor HoldenDocument 8: Albion W. Tourgée Reports on KKK Violence in North Carolina
Document 9: Freedpeople's Testimony on the Effects of Klan ViolenceDocument 10: A Spartanburg Republican Offers President Grant Advice on How to Suppress Paramilitary Violence
Document 11: Martin W. Gary's Plan for the Conservative Campaign of 1876

Unit 10: Freedpeople and the Republican Party
Document 1: Black Charleston Reacts to News of the Confederate Surrender
Document 2: An Appeal for Resources to Organize the South
Document 3: A North Carolina Republican Seeks to Clear his Name
Document 4: White Moderates Maneuver to Prevent Radical Domination of the Republican Party
Document 5: A South Carolina Agitator Falls Foul of Military Authorities
Document 6: Blacks Organize against Discrimination in the Republican Party
Document 7: North Carolina Conservatives Refuse to Seat a Black Republican Appointee
Document 8: Republicans in Tallyho, North Carolina, Protest against Democratic Fraud
Document 9: Illiteracy, Competence and the Difficulty of Building a Bi-Racial Party
Document 10: Pressures on Freedmen to Vote the Conservative Ticket
Document 11: Election Day Street Confrontations in Charleston
Document 12: A White Schoolteacher on the 1876 Elections in the South Carolina Lowcountry
Document 13: Freedpeople Confront a Black Politician for Having 'Sold Out his Race'