Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, Summer of 1868, starting with Arkansas and then eventually Georgia, seven

former Confederate states were admitted back into the Union, capping the process of

reconstruction in the wake of the Civil War.

The Reconstruction Act had stipulated that Southern rebel states stay under Northern

military jurisdiction until they installed new governments loyal to the north, formerly adopted the 14th Amendment,

which granted citizenship to all people born in the United States, including formerly enslaved Americans.

This was certainly contentious for the southern states, but also for the government in the north, where Congress, which was very interested in, I'm say, punishing the south and a heavy-handed reconstruction,

well Congress was battling with President

Andrew Johnson who was a little more sympathetic to Southern

states and Southern legislatures. So lots going on here as the country tries to

stitch itself back together. Let's talk about it all and the

process of readmittance with as always Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly

Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there. This is another I've noticed in a micro series of

episodes that I personally find really fascinating which are just the kind of like logistics of the Civil War. I feel like we focus on the military battles and so forth

But we've done episodes about like the South having to write a new Constitution when it's you know when it breaks away and now the process of bringing

to I'm like I probably should have been a lawyer or something but I find

this stuff super fascinating and it says so much about the sort of state of the country at that

moment. I suppose we should do our usual disclaimer that when we talk about radical Republicans in this context

those are the more progressive abolitionist anti-slavery pro-union camps and the Democrats are the ones, how do we characterize the Democrats?

Democrats are like usually southern, former southern slaveholders, they are sympathetic to slavery and yeah,

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