Reconstruction: America’s Terrible National Hangover After the Civil War

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2020

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After the massive devastation and scorched earth wartime methods of the Civil War, America tried to rebuild itself. This era was known as Reconstruction and lasted from 1865 to 1877. Many hoped at the beginning that the South would peacefully re-enter the Union, slaves would enjoy full liberty as American citizens, and the United States would emerge stronger.

It didn’t. Reconstruction showed that many of the divisions in the United States were as wide as ever. Thousands of freed slaves were not accepted anywhere and arrested on charges of vagrancy. Others died of disease or starvation. Radical Republicans sought citizenship full legal equality of black Americans, while Southerners sought segregation and white supremacy.

But despite the challenges, many former slaves said all that mattered was freedom. Rachel Adams of Georgia summed up the feeling of many formerly enslaved people when she said she could “live on just bread and water as long” as she was free. The men, women, and children who emerged from bondage built schools, developed communities and “made a way out of no way.”

Transcript

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0:25.6	season C's apply 18 plus Begamblue.org.
0:42.4	History is in just a bunch of names and dates and facts.
0:45.4	It's the collection of all the stories throughout human history that explain how and why we got here.
0:50.4	Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast,
0:53.0	where we look at the forgotten, neglected, strange, and even counterfactual stories that made our world what it is.
0:59.8	I'm your host, Scott Rank.
1:09.8	The Cold War was a multi decades long period after World War II,
1:13.4	where many people thought the United States and Russia would mobilize into total war,
1:18.2	committing their whole military industrial complex to the effort,
1:21.2	and probably exchanging nuclear weapons.
1:23.4	It never happened, but there was simmering standoff for decades.
1:27.6	Military outposts would eye each other across the Barine Strait or the Black Sea.
1:32.8	This was the big Cold War of the 20th century,
1:35.0	but there were smaller local theatres of this like North and South Korea across their demilitarized zone.
1:41.2	But there was another Cold War in American history that I want to look at.
1:45.4	That's a period of reconstruction.
	...

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