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John F. Couts, member of a prominent Middle Tennessee planter family, confirmed that for many whites the Bureau's presence was a humiliation: The Agent of the Bureau ... requires citizens (former owners) to make and enter into written contracts for the hire of their own negroes... . When a negro is not properly paid or fairly dealt with and reports the facts, then a squad of Negro soldiers is sent after the offender, who is escorted to town..
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Eric Foner |
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One can begin with the expansion of the source base available to scholars brought about by the digital revolution. When I began work on Reconstruction, the World Wide Web did not exist (nor did email, so that scholars wasted a lot less of their time than nowadays).
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Eric Foner |
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Even as the struggle between President Andrew Johnson and Congress reached its climax, the United States acquired Alaska, one part of an imperial agenda long advocated by Secretary of State William H. Seward. Under President Grant, the government attempted to annex the Dominican Republic.
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Eric Foner |
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I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.58
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Eric Foner |
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Reconstruction is part of our lives even today. Issues that agitate American politics--who is an American citizen and what rights come along with citizenship, the relative powers of the national government and the states, affirmative action, the relationship between political and economic democracy, the proper response to terrorism--are Reconstruction questions. Reconstruction is embedded in our judicial processes. Every session of the Supr..
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Eric Foner |
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East Tennessee would remain the most conspicuous example of discontent within the Confederacy. From this area of bridge burning and other acts of armed resistance, thousands of men made their way through the mountains to enlist in the Union army. But other mountain counties also rejected secession from the outset. One citizen of Winston County in the northern Alabama hill country believed yeomen had no business fighting for a planter-domina..
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Eric Foner |
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the emergence during the Civil War and Reconstruction of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and a new set of purposes, including an unprecedented commitment to the ideal of a national citizenship whose equal rights belonged to all Americans regardless of race.
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Eric Foner |
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Reconstruction revisionism arose in tandem with and provided a usable past for the civil rights movement. More than most historical subjects, Reconstruction history matters. Whatever the ebb and flow of historical interpretations, I hope we never lose sight of the fact that something very important for the future of our society was taking place during Reconstruction.
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Eric Foner |
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On the eve of the Civil War, the federal government was "in a state of impotence," its conception of its duties little changed since the days of Washington and Jefferson. Most functions of government were handled at the state and local level; one could live out one's life without ever encountering an official representative of national authority. But the exigencies of war created, as Sen. George S. Boutwell later put it, a "new government,"..
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Eric Foner |
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As late as December, the President signed an agreement with an entrepreneur of dubious character for the settlement of 5,000 blacks on an island off Haiti. (Four hundred hapless souls did in fact reach ile a Vache; those fortunate enough to survive returned to the United States in 1864.)
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Eric Foner |
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As Georges Clemenceau, reporting on Reconstruction for a French newspaper, observed after the war, "Any Democrat who did not manage to hint that the negro is a degenerate gorilla would be considered lacking in enthusiasm."57" --
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Eric Foner |
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The world, declared the Radical Chicago Tribune, commenting on the draft, needed to be shown that the American government "can confidently command the support of its citizens, and make the duty of the individual to the state a debt to be collected." Such views were forcefully echoed among Northern reformers and intellectuals"
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Eric Foner |
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The Confederate government increasingly molded its policies in the interest of the planter class.
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Eric Foner |
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I admire Lincoln very much.
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Eric Foner |
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South Carolina led the southern walk-out from the 1948 Democratic National Convention.
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Eric Foner |