Search Results

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the institutional transformation of the American South after the U.S. Civil War. Although the emancipation of former slaves and political upheavals of Radical Reconstruction are perhaps the most evident features of this institutional transformation, it touched upon almost every aspect of Southern society, ranging from urban life to class structure to the organizations that populated the region's agriculture and industry. The New South that resulted after Radical Reconstruction evidenced a more capitalist and market-driven society than its antebellum counterpart. Enduring uncertainty was a defining feature of this transition between precapitalist and capitalist institutions. The chapter then formulates a general theory regarding the evolution of uncertainty over the course of institutional transformation, and discusses the specific transitions toward capitalism that occurred in the economy of the U.S. South during the postbellum era.

Simkins and Robert Woody collaborated on a new project which was to be a study of the Reconstruction era in South Carolina. The result of their project was the book South Carolina during Reconstruction, which stands out among the many works written in the early twentieth century on Reconstruction. Its reevaluation of the Dunning school and its inclusion of developments during Reconstruction that went beyond politics, such as economic and social matters, made it unique for its time. It deserves the significant place it holds in the annals of Reconstruction thought. South Carolina during Reconstruction also transformed Simkins into a major scholar and gave him a reputation as a progressive thinker.

This concluding chapter summarizes the evidence gathered for the postbellum South and compares it with other postemancipation projects in the Americas. The common pattern of gradual emancipation seen in former colonial possessions in the Caribbean and South America has considerable similarity with early efforts to manage uncertainty in the era of Radical Reconstruction. As in the case of the American South, those postemancipation projects soon fell victim to competing claims and mobilization among landowners, workers, and other parties, leading to profound and durable uncertainty in the economies of former slave societies. Even in the twenty-first century, some of this durable uncertainty remains as the United States struggle with the legacies of slavery and emancipation.

In chapter 3, Edward Rugemer examines how Jamaica’s Morant Bay Rebellion was not only reflected tensions in postemancipation Atlantic societies but was also related to US Reconstruction and the ways in which its advocates envisioned life for freed slaves. The example of the Morant Bay Rebellion, Edward Rugemer argues, provided an example of the dangers of emancipation without political rights. American politicians did not have to look far in other postemancipation societies to be alarmed. Rugemer demonstrates that Radical Reconstruction—or how Congressional Republicans decided on intervention in the spring of 1867—reflected these fears.

The defeat of the Confederacy destroyed slavery and the slaveholders' quest for an independent nation. The Freedmen's Bureau, established by Congress weeks before the surrender, aimed to construct a system of compensated labor on the ruins of slavery and to identify and protect the rights that freed people needed to function in the new world of freedom. They encountered strong opposition from former slaveholders, which President Andrew Johnson's lenient reconstruction policy appeared to encourage. When Radical Republicans gained the upper hand, they enacted sweeping legislation designed to reconstruct the seceded states on the principle of racial democracy (the Reconstruction Acts) and to safeguard black Americans' civil and political rights (a Civil Rights Act and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments). But by failing to legislate a redistribution of Southern land, the Radicals squelched the freed people's most cherished hope for economic advancement. Although this and other setbacks-including the violent overthrow of Radical Reconstruction in 1876-dampened hopes, the quest for freedom and equality endured.

This chapter illustrates how Zebulon Baird Vance rose again. Running to “redeem” the state from Radical Reconstruction, Vance led one branch of a regionwide assault against Republican rule. Between 1874 and 1876, Democrats drove Republicans from state houses, took control of Congress, and nearly expelled Republicans from the White House. By 1877, propelled by the Hayes-Tilden electoral crisis, the demands of federal bondholders, and the perceived need for troops against natives out West and against strikers in the East, one phase of national Reconstruction ended with the withdrawal of the last permanent federal troops from the South. Soon, Democrats in North Carolina and other Southern states sharply curtailed African Americans' political power, and many Northern Republicans lost hope for and interest in civil rights.

This chapter explores the origination of the coon song, a ragtime melody mixing jazz and march music and replete with degrading racial stereotypes. May Irwin was the most prominent white female coon shouter. Songs by Stephen Foster and those performed by William Walker and Bert Williams are discussed, as is the nationwide dissemination of sheet music from Tin Pan Alley. The author examines abolitionism and Radical Reconstruction in African American history and the increase of lynchings of African Americans in Jim Crow America. She then looks at the “Greedy Gal” and the “Idealized” and “Pathetic” coon stereotypes of black life.