Crystal N. Feimster
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469624181
- eISBN:
- 9781469624204
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469624181.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
This chapter focuses on African American women's resistance to sexual violence during the transition from slavery to freedom and how their campaigns against rape influenced national debates about the ...
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This chapter focuses on African American women's resistance to sexual violence during the transition from slavery to freedom and how their campaigns against rape influenced national debates about the emerging meanings of freedom and black citizenship. During Reconstruction, the Republican governments lost political power in the South, paving the way for night riders and Klansmen to rape and sexually brutalize black women for political gain. In response, black women renewed their efforts to redefine citizenship to include all women and their right to determine when and with whom they had sexual relations. Citing the sexual vulnerability of slave women and their efforts to defend themselves, this chapter examines how black women and their allies shaped the Republican Party's vision of racial equality from the 1850s until the end of Reconstruction. It shows how black women's radical campaigns for sexual justice and Republican ideas about legal equality combined to make visible the emergence of a new sexual citizenship that culminated during the Civil War.Less
This chapter focuses on African American women's resistance to sexual violence during the transition from slavery to freedom and how their campaigns against rape influenced national debates about the emerging meanings of freedom and black citizenship. During Reconstruction, the Republican governments lost political power in the South, paving the way for night riders and Klansmen to rape and sexually brutalize black women for political gain. In response, black women renewed their efforts to redefine citizenship to include all women and their right to determine when and with whom they had sexual relations. Citing the sexual vulnerability of slave women and their efforts to defend themselves, this chapter examines how black women and their allies shaped the Republican Party's vision of racial equality from the 1850s until the end of Reconstruction. It shows how black women's radical campaigns for sexual justice and Republican ideas about legal equality combined to make visible the emergence of a new sexual citizenship that culminated during the Civil War.
David J. Bodenhamer
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199360444
- eISBN:
- 9780190254339
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199360444.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
This introductory chapter sets out the book’s purpose, which is to explore the dynamic of power and liberty by examining seven major themes in American constitutional history—federalism, balance of ...
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This introductory chapter sets out the book’s purpose, which is to explore the dynamic of power and liberty by examining seven major themes in American constitutional history—federalism, balance of powers, property, representation, equality, rights, and security. The book does not contain everything that readers might want to know about constitutional history and interpretation. Instead, it examines core concepts historically, ending with their contemporary expression. The goal is to explain the Constitution as an organic, contested, and dynamic frame for government in which past concerns and experiences influence present understanding.Less
This introductory chapter sets out the book’s purpose, which is to explore the dynamic of power and liberty by examining seven major themes in American constitutional history—federalism, balance of powers, property, representation, equality, rights, and security. The book does not contain everything that readers might want to know about constitutional history and interpretation. Instead, it examines core concepts historically, ending with their contemporary expression. The goal is to explain the Constitution as an organic, contested, and dynamic frame for government in which past concerns and experiences influence present understanding.
Joseph P. Reidy
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814785690
- eISBN:
- 9780814785737
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814785690.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
This chapter focuses on the responses of free blacks to the Civil War. During the war, African American volunteers from the Northern states took up the cause of citizenship rights where the military ...
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This chapter focuses on the responses of free blacks to the Civil War. During the war, African American volunteers from the Northern states took up the cause of citizenship rights where the military service of their fathers and grandfathers and the abolitionist and the state convention movements had left it: in full expectation that the government would reward their sacrifices with full freedom, equality, and citizenship. They defined citizenship in their own terms through their complex loyalties to the free black communities in which they lived, to the slave communities to which many Northern blacks had close ties, and to the dominant white society that influenced their lives. Without their efforts, the prevailing antebellum concepts of citizenship may not have undergone such scrutiny during the Civil War era.Less
This chapter focuses on the responses of free blacks to the Civil War. During the war, African American volunteers from the Northern states took up the cause of citizenship rights where the military service of their fathers and grandfathers and the abolitionist and the state convention movements had left it: in full expectation that the government would reward their sacrifices with full freedom, equality, and citizenship. They defined citizenship in their own terms through their complex loyalties to the free black communities in which they lived, to the slave communities to which many Northern blacks had close ties, and to the dominant white society that influenced their lives. Without their efforts, the prevailing antebellum concepts of citizenship may not have undergone such scrutiny during the Civil War era.
Mark Wahlgren Summers
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781469617572
- eISBN:
- 9781469617596
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469617572.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
This chapter discusses the ebb and flow of Unionism in the south. It analyzes President Andrew Johnson's pardoning policy; southern movements aimed at rebuilding white militia to keep order and hold ...
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This chapter discusses the ebb and flow of Unionism in the south. It analyzes President Andrew Johnson's pardoning policy; southern movements aimed at rebuilding white militia to keep order and hold the freedpeople in awe, and the disarming of the black population; and northern vagrancy laws. By 1866, it became clear that conservatives saw their every concession as tactical and temporary until they got the federal government off their back. Far from serving as a way-station on the road to full equality, the Black Codes were the absolute most that southern states were prepared to concede and only as long as they had to.Less
This chapter discusses the ebb and flow of Unionism in the south. It analyzes President Andrew Johnson's pardoning policy; southern movements aimed at rebuilding white militia to keep order and hold the freedpeople in awe, and the disarming of the black population; and northern vagrancy laws. By 1866, it became clear that conservatives saw their every concession as tactical and temporary until they got the federal government off their back. Far from serving as a way-station on the road to full equality, the Black Codes were the absolute most that southern states were prepared to concede and only as long as they had to.
Bridget Ford
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469626222
- eISBN:
- 9781469628028
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469626222.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
This concluding chapter describes Louisville’s “Emancipation Day,” which took place on July 4, 1865. Orchestrated by the city’s leading black churches, this remarkable day saw slavery declared ...
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This concluding chapter describes Louisville’s “Emancipation Day,” which took place on July 4, 1865. Orchestrated by the city’s leading black churches, this remarkable day saw slavery declared finally dead by the Union commander in the state before tens of thousands of bondsmen and women who had fled masters in Kentucky’s interior. The chapter shows how this unique day unfolded, and reveals the particular messages delivered by African American leaders. It argues that Kentucky’s unusual “Emancipation Day” happened because of bonds of union forged before and during the Civil War. The epilogue also makes a case for the historical significance of efforts to imagine an inclusive society before 1865, despite continued efforts to undermine equality in the United States following the Civil War.Less
This concluding chapter describes Louisville’s “Emancipation Day,” which took place on July 4, 1865. Orchestrated by the city’s leading black churches, this remarkable day saw slavery declared finally dead by the Union commander in the state before tens of thousands of bondsmen and women who had fled masters in Kentucky’s interior. The chapter shows how this unique day unfolded, and reveals the particular messages delivered by African American leaders. It argues that Kentucky’s unusual “Emancipation Day” happened because of bonds of union forged before and during the Civil War. The epilogue also makes a case for the historical significance of efforts to imagine an inclusive society before 1865, despite continued efforts to undermine equality in the United States following the Civil War.
Daniel W. Crofts
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469627311
- eISBN:
- 9781469627335
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469627311.003.0014
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
Epilogue Two shows how the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment—the enlarged definition of national citizenship, and the requirement that states provide equal protection, due process, and ...
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Epilogue Two shows how the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment—the enlarged definition of national citizenship, and the requirement that states provide equal protection, due process, and privileges or immunities to all citizens—was crafted in 1866 by yet another Republican congressman from Ohio, John A. Bingham, the most radical dissenter from the prewar political consensus that slavery in the states could never be touched by the federal government. Bingham believed that the promise of equality always was implicit in the Constitution; he insisted that it be made explicit. He thereby created what has become the Constitution’s most important section. Bingham’s handiwork assured that the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s had far stronger constitutional foundations than the pre–Civil War abolition movement. Long ignored, twisted, and misinterpreted, the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment moved to center stage a century after it first was written. President John F. Kennedy’s watershed speech of June 11, 1963, and Martin Luther King’s oration at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, made it morally imperative that the constitutional transformation of the Civil War era be heeded.Less
Epilogue Two shows how the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment—the enlarged definition of national citizenship, and the requirement that states provide equal protection, due process, and privileges or immunities to all citizens—was crafted in 1866 by yet another Republican congressman from Ohio, John A. Bingham, the most radical dissenter from the prewar political consensus that slavery in the states could never be touched by the federal government. Bingham believed that the promise of equality always was implicit in the Constitution; he insisted that it be made explicit. He thereby created what has become the Constitution’s most important section. Bingham’s handiwork assured that the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s had far stronger constitutional foundations than the pre–Civil War abolition movement. Long ignored, twisted, and misinterpreted, the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment moved to center stage a century after it first was written. President John F. Kennedy’s watershed speech of June 11, 1963, and Martin Luther King’s oration at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, made it morally imperative that the constitutional transformation of the Civil War era be heeded.
Barbara A. Gannon
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807834527
- eISBN:
- 9781469603124
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807877708_gannon
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
In the years after the Civil War, black and white Union soldiers who survived the horrific struggle joined the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR)—the Union army's largest veterans' organization. This ...
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In the years after the Civil War, black and white Union soldiers who survived the horrific struggle joined the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR)—the Union army's largest veterans' organization. This study chronicles black and white veterans' efforts to create and sustain the nation's first interracial organization. According to the conventional view, the freedoms and interests of African American veterans were not defended by white Union veterans after the war, despite the shared tradition of sacrifice among both black and white soldiers. This book, however, challenges this scholarship, arguing that although black veterans still suffered under the contemporary racial mores, the GAR honored its black members in many instances and ascribed them a greater equality than previous studies have shown. Using evidence of integrated posts and veterans' thoughts on their comradeship and the cause, the book reveals that white veterans embraced black veterans because their membership in the GAR demonstrated that their wartime suffering created a transcendent bond—comradeship—which overcame even the most pernicious social barrier: race-based separation. By upholding a more inclusive memory of a war fought for liberty as well as union, the GAR's “Won Cause” challenged the Lost Cause version of Civil War memory.Less
In the years after the Civil War, black and white Union soldiers who survived the horrific struggle joined the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR)—the Union army's largest veterans' organization. This study chronicles black and white veterans' efforts to create and sustain the nation's first interracial organization. According to the conventional view, the freedoms and interests of African American veterans were not defended by white Union veterans after the war, despite the shared tradition of sacrifice among both black and white soldiers. This book, however, challenges this scholarship, arguing that although black veterans still suffered under the contemporary racial mores, the GAR honored its black members in many instances and ascribed them a greater equality than previous studies have shown. Using evidence of integrated posts and veterans' thoughts on their comradeship and the cause, the book reveals that white veterans embraced black veterans because their membership in the GAR demonstrated that their wartime suffering created a transcendent bond—comradeship—which overcame even the most pernicious social barrier: race-based separation. By upholding a more inclusive memory of a war fought for liberty as well as union, the GAR's “Won Cause” challenged the Lost Cause version of Civil War memory.
Bridget Ford
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469626222
- eISBN:
- 9781469628028
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469626222.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
This chapter argues that writers and educators in the Ohio River valley helped to make enlightenment a powerful bond of union before the Civil War by imagining a world in which every person ...
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This chapter argues that writers and educators in the Ohio River valley helped to make enlightenment a powerful bond of union before the Civil War by imagining a world in which every person regardless of race could fulfil his or her own potential. This chapter describes the work of black and white antislavery reformers in Cincinnati and Louisville who pursued far-reaching efforts to eradicate prejudice and foster feelings of respect and belonging in daily life through universal public schools. Cincinnatians and Louisvillians also produced a unique body of fictional literature, plumbing the deeper meaning of widespread literacy and creating the grounds for cross-race identification through the act of reading. Published on the eve of the Civil War, this literature wholeheartedly endorsed the idea of a biracial society with benefits and opportunities universally available.Less
This chapter argues that writers and educators in the Ohio River valley helped to make enlightenment a powerful bond of union before the Civil War by imagining a world in which every person regardless of race could fulfil his or her own potential. This chapter describes the work of black and white antislavery reformers in Cincinnati and Louisville who pursued far-reaching efforts to eradicate prejudice and foster feelings of respect and belonging in daily life through universal public schools. Cincinnatians and Louisvillians also produced a unique body of fictional literature, plumbing the deeper meaning of widespread literacy and creating the grounds for cross-race identification through the act of reading. Published on the eve of the Civil War, this literature wholeheartedly endorsed the idea of a biracial society with benefits and opportunities universally available.
R. B. Bernstein
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199832576
- eISBN:
- 9780190254674
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199832576.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
This book presents an overview of the brilliant, flawed, and quarrelsome group of lawyers, politicians, merchants, military men, and clergy known as the “Founding Fathers” — who got as close to the ...
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This book presents an overview of the brilliant, flawed, and quarrelsome group of lawyers, politicians, merchants, military men, and clergy known as the “Founding Fathers” — who got as close to the ideal of the Platonic “philosopher-kings” as American or world history has ever seen. The book reveals Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and the other founders not as shining demigods but as imperfect human beings — people much like us — who nevertheless achieved political greatness. They emerge here as men who sought to transcend their intellectual world even as they were bound by its limits, men who strove to lead the new nation even as they had to defer to the great body of the people and learn with them the possibilities and limitations of politics. Bernstein deftly traces the dynamic forces that molded these men and their contemporaries as British colonists in North America and as intellectual citizens of the Atlantic civilization's Age of Enlightenment. It analyzes the American Revolution, the framing and adoption of state and federal constitutions, and the key concepts and problems — among them independence, federalism, equality, slavery, and the separation of church and state — that both shaped and circumscribed the founders' achievements as the United States sought its place in the world.Less
This book presents an overview of the brilliant, flawed, and quarrelsome group of lawyers, politicians, merchants, military men, and clergy known as the “Founding Fathers” — who got as close to the ideal of the Platonic “philosopher-kings” as American or world history has ever seen. The book reveals Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and the other founders not as shining demigods but as imperfect human beings — people much like us — who nevertheless achieved political greatness. They emerge here as men who sought to transcend their intellectual world even as they were bound by its limits, men who strove to lead the new nation even as they had to defer to the great body of the people and learn with them the possibilities and limitations of politics. Bernstein deftly traces the dynamic forces that molded these men and their contemporaries as British colonists in North America and as intellectual citizens of the Atlantic civilization's Age of Enlightenment. It analyzes the American Revolution, the framing and adoption of state and federal constitutions, and the key concepts and problems — among them independence, federalism, equality, slavery, and the separation of church and state — that both shaped and circumscribed the founders' achievements as the United States sought its place in the world.
David J. Bodenhamer
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199360444
- eISBN:
- 9780190254339
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199360444.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
The framers of the Constitution chose their words carefully when they wrote of a more perfect union—not absolutely perfect, but with room for improvement. Indeed, the United States no longer operates ...
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The framers of the Constitution chose their words carefully when they wrote of a more perfect union—not absolutely perfect, but with room for improvement. Indeed, the United States no longer operates under the same Constitution as that ratified in 1788, or even the one completed by the Bill of Rights in 1791—because it is no longer the same nation. This book provides a comprehensive new look at America’s basic law, integrating the latest legal scholarship with historical context to highlight how it has evolved over time. The Constitution, it notes, was the product of the first modern revolution, and revolutions are, by definition, moments when the past shifts toward an unfamiliar future, one radically different from what was foreseen only a brief time earlier. In seeking to balance power and liberty, the framers established a structure that would allow future generations to continually readjust the scale. The book explores this dynamic through seven major constitutional themes: federalism, balance of powers, property, representation, equality, rights, and security. With each, it takes a historical approach, following their changes over time. For example, the framers wrote multiple protections for property rights into the Constitution in response to actions by state governments after the Revolution. But twentieth-century courts—and Congress—redefined property rights through measures such as zoning and the designation of historical landmarks (diminishing their commercial value) in response to the needs of a modern economy. The framers anticipated just such a future reworking of their own compromises between liberty and power.Less
The framers of the Constitution chose their words carefully when they wrote of a more perfect union—not absolutely perfect, but with room for improvement. Indeed, the United States no longer operates under the same Constitution as that ratified in 1788, or even the one completed by the Bill of Rights in 1791—because it is no longer the same nation. This book provides a comprehensive new look at America’s basic law, integrating the latest legal scholarship with historical context to highlight how it has evolved over time. The Constitution, it notes, was the product of the first modern revolution, and revolutions are, by definition, moments when the past shifts toward an unfamiliar future, one radically different from what was foreseen only a brief time earlier. In seeking to balance power and liberty, the framers established a structure that would allow future generations to continually readjust the scale. The book explores this dynamic through seven major constitutional themes: federalism, balance of powers, property, representation, equality, rights, and security. With each, it takes a historical approach, following their changes over time. For example, the framers wrote multiple protections for property rights into the Constitution in response to actions by state governments after the Revolution. But twentieth-century courts—and Congress—redefined property rights through measures such as zoning and the designation of historical landmarks (diminishing their commercial value) in response to the needs of a modern economy. The framers anticipated just such a future reworking of their own compromises between liberty and power.
