After Slavery: Educator Resources
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Unit One Documents: Giving Meaning to Freedom
- 1. A White Piedmont Farmer Reflects on Black Freedom
- 2. President Johnson offers Amnesty to Former Confederates
- 3. President Andrew Johnson Appoints William W. Holden Provisional Governor of North Carolina
- 4. A Northern Military Officer Advises Former Slaves on Freedom
- 5. A Planter's Vision of Freedom and Free Labor
- 6. Two North Carolina Freedwomen Testify Against Their Former Owner
- 7. A Committee of Freedmen on Edisto Island Reveal their Expectations
- 8. Former Slaves Describe Conditions on a Georgia Plantation
- 9. A Charleston Freedwoman Opens A Bank Account
Unit Two Documents: Freed Slaves Mobilize
- 1. A Wartime Encounter Between Two South Carolina Slaves
- 2. Rev. Henry McNeal Turner Reports on Organizing among Freedpeople in Georgia
- 3. An Unnamed Black Organizer Reports on the Reception for Republican Speakers among Freedpeople in South Carolina
- 4. A Destitute Local Union League President Seeks Aid from the Governor of North Carolina
- 5. John T. Costin Reports on the Difficulties of Organizing
- 6. A Union League Organizer Seeks permission to Bargain on the Behalf of Women and Children
- 7. A Federal Officer Reports that Freedpeople are Organizing Military Companies on the South Carolina Sea Islands
- 8. White Conservatives Complain that the Union Leagues are Organizing Labor Strikes South of Charleston
- 9. A Charleston Newspaper on the 1868 Municipal Elections
Unit Three Documents: Land and Labor
- 1. Rufus Saxton Argues That Land Should Be Set Aside for Freedpeople
- 2. Freedmen's Bureau Report on the Treatment of Plantation Laborers in Gates County, North Carolina
- 3. A Freedpeople's Colony on Roanoke Island, North Carolina
- 4. Rufus Saxton's Letter to Northern Planter Edward S. Philbrick
- 5. General William T. Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15
- 6. Freedpeople React to the Restoration of Land to their Former Masters
- 7. Planter-Attorney William Whaley Wants to Exclude Blacks from the Land Board
- 8. South Carolina's 'Black Code'
- 9. A Desperate North Carolina Republican Appeals to Governor Holden for Land
- 10. White Confederate Veterans Appeal to South Carolina's Land Commission
- 11. A Freedpeople's 'Co-operative' in Colleton County, South Carolina
Unit Four Documents: Freedom, Black Soldiers, and the Union Military
- 1. General Rufus Saxton's Report on an Early Engagement by Black Troops
- 2. New Bern's Black Community Negotiates their Terms for Military Service
- 3. North Carolina's 'African Brigade' Raids the State's Interior
- 4. General Saxton Protests against the Forced Enlistment of Freed Slaves
- 5. Clashes between White and Black Union Troops in Charleston
- 6. Georgetown (S. C.) Whites Petition for the Removal of Black Troops
- 7. Contrasting Attitudes toward Union Troops in the South Carolina Upcountry
- 8. Black Troops, White Hostility, and Radicalization in the Upcountry
- 9. Petition from Union County Republicans against Removal of Troops
Unit Five Documents: Conservatives Respond to Emancipation
- 1. A White Texas Farmer Shoots a Freedman
- 2. "The War is Not Over"
- 3. D. F. Caldwell's Ideas for Economic Development in North Carolina
- 4. 1865 North Carolina Constitutional Convention Responds to Freedpeople
- 5. Wade Hampton's Advice to Confederate Veterans
- 6. Judge A. P. Aldrich Removed from the Bench
- 7. Wade Hampton's Advice to Freedpeople
- 8. A Conservative Realizes the Mistakes of Earlier Policies
- 9. Governor Jonathan Worth Argues Against 1867 Call for a Constitutional Convention
- 10. Plato Durham Argues Against the Reconstruction Acts in the 1868 Constitutional Convention
- 11. Dr. Pride Jones Agrees to Help Stop the Ku Klux Klan
Unit Six Documents: Pursuing Citizenship, Justice, and Equality
- 1. N.C. Planter Denying Schoolchildren Use of the Public Roads
- 2. Whites Reclaim an Edisto Church from Freedpeople
- 3. Report on Conditions in a North Carolina Jail
- 4. Charleston Protests against Streetcar Segregation
- 5. Harassment of Freedpeople in the Vicinity of Wilmington
- 6. Columbia Democrats Debate Black Suffrage
- 7. Sawmill Operator Tries to Prevent Employees from Voting the Radical Ticket
- 8. The Difficulty of Obtaining Justice from Local Authorities
- 9. North Carolina Conservatives Attempt to Frame a Union League Official
- 10. Freedpeople Petition for the Removal of a Trial Justice
- 11. Black Workers Petition Governor Scott against Extortion
Unit Seven Documents: Gender and the Politics of Freedom
- 1. The Social and Domestic Price of Free Labor
- 2. A Black Woman Imagines a Differently Gendered Working Class
- 3. A Virginia Freedwoman Critiques the Gendered Nature of Freedom and Free Labor
- 4. A Freedwoman's Civil and Domestic Expectations
- 5. A Husband Shoulders a New, Free-Labor Duty
- 6. The Problems of Family-based Labor
- 7. Soldiering Men
- 8. Clashing Ideas about Gender and Political Rights
- 9. Playing Politics with Gender
- 10. A Black Minister Proposes a Collective Solution to Freedom's Gendered Problems
- 11. A Southern White Woman Reflects on New Circumstances, a New Identity
Unit Eight Documents: Planters, Poor Whites and White Supremacy
- 1. Sidney Andrews on Attitudes among North Carolina's Poor Whites
- 2. J. B. Sitton's Petition for a Presidential Pardon
- 3. North Carolina Constitutional Convention Protects Homesteads
- 4. The Ku Klux Klan Attacks a White Man Assisting Blacks
- 5. Matthew C. Butler - Planters React to Being Ignored by Government
- 6. Belton O'Neall Townsend on 1876 Strategy
- 7. A Description of Wade Hampton's Campaign
- 8. T. D. Gwyn Argues Against the Fence Law
- 9. South Carolina Greenbacker Explains His Opposition to Democrats
Unit Nine Documents: Coercion, Paramilitary Terror, and Resistance
- 1. Ex-Confederate Soldiers Terrorizing Union Men and Freedpeople in North Carolina
- 2. Early Outrages against Freedpeople in South Carolina
- 3. Hostility to Freedpeople and Federal Authorities in the South Carolina Upcountry
- 4. Former Freedmen's Bureau Official Rufus B. Saxton on Freedpeople's Desire to Acquire Arms
- 5. North Carolina Freedmen Seek Protection from Governor Holden
- 6. Governor Scott is Warned of Impending Clashes in the South Carolina Upcountry
- 7. A. M. E. Pastor S. B. Williams Reports Atrocities to Governor Holden
- 8. Albion W. Tourgée Reports on KKK Violence in North Carolina
- 9. Freedpeople's Testimony on the Effects of Klan Violence
- 10. A Spartanburg Republican Offers President Grant Advice on How to Suppress Paramilitary Violence
- 11. Martin W. Gary's Plan for the Conservative Campaign of 1876
Unit Ten Documents: Freedpeople and the Republican Party
- 1. Black Charleston Reacts to News of the Confederate Surrender
- 2. An Appeal for Resources to Organize the South
- 3. A North Carolina Republican Seeks to Clear his Name
- 4. White Moderates Maneuver to Prevent Radical Domination of the Republican Party
- 5. A South Carolina Agitator Falls Foul of Military Authorities
- 6. Blacks Organize against Discrimination in the Republican Party
- 7. North Carolina Conservatives Refuse to Seat a Black Republican Appointee
- 8. Republicans in Tallyho, North Carolina, Protest against Democratic Fraud
- 9. Illiteracy, Competence and the Difficulty of Building a Bi-Racial Party
- 10. Pressures on Freedmen to Vote the Conservative Ticket
- 11. Election Day Street Confrontations in Charleston
- 12. A White Schoolteacher on the 1876 Elections in the South Carolina Lowcountry
- 13. Freedpeople Confront a Black Politician for Having 'Sold Out his Race'
South Carolina Curriculum Standards
Recommended Reading
Digital Resources
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Exhibit HomeRecommended Reading
General Readings on Slavery, Emancipation, and its Aftermath
Books:
Anderson, Eric and Alfred A. Moss, Jr, eds. Facts of Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of John Hope Franklin. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1991.
Berlin, Ira and Phillip Morgan, eds. Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the America. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 1993.
Brown, Thomas J., ed. Reconstructions: New Perspectives on the Postbellum United States. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2008.
Camejo, Peter. Racism, Revolution, Reaction, 1861-1877. Atlanta, Georgia: Pathfinder Press, 1976 (2008).
Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. New York, New York: Free Press, 1999.
Edwards, Laura F. Gendered Strife and Confusion: the Political Culture of Reconstruction. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1997.
Fitzgerald, Michael W. The Union League Movement in the Deep South: Politics and Agricultural Change during Reconstruction. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. New York, New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2002.
_____. Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1983 (2007).
Frey, Silvia and Betty Woods, eds. From Slavery to Emancipation in the Atlantic World. London, England: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999.
Genovese, Eugene. Roll Jordan Roll: the World the Slaves Made. New York, New York: Vintage Books, 1976.
Gillette, William. Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.
Hahn, Steven. A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2005.
_____. The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009.
Litwack, Leon. Been in the Storm So Long: the Aftermath of Slavery. New York, New York: Vintage Books, 1980.
Limerick, Patricia Nelson. "Has 'Minority History' Transformed the Historical Discourse?" Perspectives: Newsletter of the American Historical Association 35:8 (Nov. 1997).
Miller, Steven et al. "Between Emancipation and Enfranchisement: Law and the Political Mobilization of Black Southerners, 1865-1867," Chicago-Kent Law Review 70: 3 (1995): 1059-77.
Mohr, Clarence. On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2001.
Montgomery, David. Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1981.
Novick, Peter. "Divergence and Dissent," in That Noble Dream: the 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession, 206-249.
Oakes, James. "The Political Significance of Slave Resistance," History Workshop, 22 (Autumn, 1986): 89-107.
Robinson, Armstead L. "Beyond the Realm of Social Consensus: New Meanings of Reconstruction for American History," Journal of American History 68:2 (Sept. 1981): 276-97.
_____. "The Difference Freedom Made: the Emancipation of Afro-Americans," with comments from Eric Foner and Nell Painter, in Darlene Clark Hine, ed. The State of Afro-American History,51-88.
O'Donovan, Susan E. Becoming Free in the Cotton South. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Olsen, Otto, ed. Reconstruction and Redemption in the South. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
Perman, Michael. Reunion without Compromise: the South & Reconstruction, 1865-1868. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
Rabinowitz, Howard N. Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1982.
Richardson, Heather Cox. The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004.
____. West From Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2008.
Rodrigue, John C. Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana's Sugar Parishes, 1862-1880. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 2001.
Rose, Willie Lee. Rehearsal for Reconstruction: the Port Royal Experiment. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1999.
Saville, Julie. The Work of Reconstruction: From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina, 1860-1870.Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Shachtman, Max. Race and Revolution: a Lost Chapter in American Radicalism, Christopher Phelps, ed. London and New York: Verso, 2003.
Singletary, Otis. Negro Militia and Reconstruction. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1957.
Trelease, Allen W. White Terror: the Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Reconstruction. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1979.
Tunnell, Ted. Crucible of Reconstruction: War, Radicalism and Race in Louisiana, 1862-1877. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1992.
Woodward, C. Vann. Reunion and Reaction; the Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1991.
Articles:
Barkley Brown, Elsa. "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Public Culture (Fall 1994), 107-46.
Berlin, Ira. "Who Freed the Slaves? Emancipation and Its Meaning," in David W. Blight and Brooks D. Simpson, eds. Union & Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era,105-122. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997.
_____. "Writing Freedom's History: The Destruction of Slavery," Prologue 17:4 (Winter1985): 211-27.
Callinicos, Alex. "Marxism and the Crisis in Social History," in John Rees, ed. Essays on Historical Materialism. London, England: Bookmarks, 1998.
Dunning, William A. “The Undoing of Reconstruction,” in Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics (New York, New York: Macmillan, 1904), 353-385.
Genovese, Eugene and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. "The Political Crisis of Social History: Class Struggle as Subject and Object," in Fruits of Merchant Capital, 179-212. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1983.
Johnson, Walter. "On Agency," Journal of Social History 37 (Fall 2003): 113-124.