THE RECONSTRUCTION OF AMERICA, 1863-1893

Catalog description

Course explores and assesses the attempt to realize what Abraham Lincoln called “a new birth of freedom” during the decades following the American Civil War. In the moment, "reconstructing" the United States quickly moved past the political reintegration of the former Confederate states into the federal republic to a more expansive quest to revolutionize American society and institutions by placing them on a foundation of equal rights. The struggle to define and claim freedom and equality thus possessed major implications for all aspects of American life, along with more than a few ironies, exclusions and contradictions. By the early 1890s, Americans’ collective effort to settle these questions produced some areas of consensus, but also continued to divide a country that to many contemporaries appeared to be confronting serious and accelerating crises.