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Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880

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By W.E.B. Du Bois

Publisher Description

The pioneering work in the study of the role of Black Americans during Reconstruction by the most influential Black intellectual of his time.

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35 Reviews

4.0

p¡nkskyes4peace

Created 3 months ago

AndreDuane_

Created 7 months ago

Beautifully-written Descriptive Original Abuse Bigotry Misogyny Racism Violence

BurksAndCaicos

Created 7 months ago

“It's really amazing how the more things change, the more they stay the same, and seeing DuBois write shit in 1935 that was based on events of 1860s/1870s that could fit to events that happen today made me depressed in so many ways. I think that the earlier chapters were better structured than some of the later ones. (Chapter XII was trying to do too much with too little, which is a given because I think he said that he didn't have very many sources there.) It's self-explanatory from the title, but I appreciated how he gave the background/context of the early war/pre-war years and kind of did it chronologically. However, while he went very in-depth on Lincoln and Johnson's Presidencies, he didn't focus as much on or Hayes. Part of the reason I felt this way is because he kept mentioning the "crisis of 1873" or "crisis of 1876," but he didn't really explain what the crisis was, unlike the earlier chapters. It was also because Grant felt somewhat of a non-factor in this book, but I feel like I learned a lot about him when Reconstruction came up in school. I know that Lincoln dying when he did means that we'll never know how we would have been on the topic of pardons for ex-Confederates &c, but Johnson being President during that period gave me the same feeling as Truman being the President during the early Cold War years. Like the person guaranteed to make a bad situation even worse. It also reminded me of that part in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, where Shirer was like "the Weimar Republic was doomed from the first moment." Like, before Reconstruction could even start, you already had a President saying that no Black people should not vote, and yes ex-confederates should get their land back and if I said the opposite of that before no I didn't and also if I was, I wasn't talking about BLACK people. Like there were quotes from this man that had me like "Trump is stealing his whole flow word for word and bar for bar!" Speaking of, here are some of the quotes I wrote down: pg. 51"...the Confederate government had no power to reopen the slave trade, the states could if they wanted to..." STATE RIGHTS! AGAIN! Like change "Confederate" to "Southern" and "reopen the slave trade" to "ban abortion" and welcome back, 2020s! pg. 64: "Imagine, if you will a slave population, springing from antecedent barbarism, rising up and leaving its ancient bondage, forsaking its local traditions and all the associations and attractions of the old plantation life, coming garbed in rags or in silks, with feet shod or bleeding, individually or in families and larger groups,-an army of slaves and fugitives, pushing its way irresistibly toward an army of fighting men, perpetually on the defensive and perpetually ready to attack. The arrival among us of these hordes was like the oncoming of cities. There was no plan in this exodus, no Moses to lead it. Unlettered reason or the mere inarticulate decision of instinct brought them to us. Often the slaves met prejudices against their color more bitter than any they had left behind. But their own interests were identical, they felt, with the objects of our armies; a blind terror stung them, an equally blind hope allured them, and to us they come." pg. 86: "...preached against emancipation, declaring that the control of slavery ought to be left absolutely and exclusively to the states." State's rights again, take a shot. pg. 110: "How extraordinary, and what a tribute to ignorance and religious hypocrisy, is the fact that in the minds of most people, even those of liberals, only murder makes men. The slave pleaded; he was humble; he protected the women of the South, and the world ignored him. The slave killed white men; and behold, he was a man!" pg. 264: "...while the Supreme Court was destined to assume powers which would at times threaten to stop the progress of the nation, almost without appeal." pg. 264: "...a new and extraordinary situation in which the President of the United States...was opposed to the overwhelming majority of the party of Congress which had elected him, and refused in effect to do their will." pg. 305: "-for there were cowards in those days, as there are in these-" banger. pg. 317: "...and denying that it was really a legal congress" Welcome back, President Trump pg. 317: "At Cleveland [Johnson's] audience become a mob while the President himself increased the hubbub...someone cried, 'Why not hang Thad Stevens and Wendell Phillips?' 'Yes,' yelled Johnson, 'Why not hang them?'" WELCOME BACK, PRESIDENT TRUMP pg. 318: The quotes on this page about Johnson's rallies made me realized that the USA has always been a country of fools and degenerates. pg. 336: "And why not? No more idiotic program could be laid down than to require a people to follow a written rule of government 90 years old..." Another quote from the 1930s that could fit today and is depressing that it can. pg. 339: "Radical newspapers published...a statement that the President had told...that he would resist by force if Congress attempted to impeach him." pg. 343: "The problem was a difficult one. When can a ruler rule in the United States? The nation by overwhelming majority had declared for union, for emancipation to preserve the Union, for no increase in the political power of the white South, and for Negro suffrage to prevent this increased political power and reward Negro loyalty. This clear will of the majority of the people, represented in Congress, was frustrated by a President who repeatedly refused to obey the plan mandate of the party which elected him. Johnson virtually declared Congress illegal because the South was unrepresented. Congress denied that a criminal could be his own judge. Who could settle this dispute....Under any, even partial, theory of such responsibility, Johnson would have been compelled to resign; but the antiquated constitutional requirements of a system of laws built for another age and for entirely different circumstances were now being applied to unforeseen conditions...The Constitution made the removal of the President contingent upon his committing 'high crimes and misdemeanors.' Here then came a plain question of definition: was it a crime, in the judgement of the people of the United States in 1867, for a President to block the overwhelming will of a successful majority of voters during a period of nearly three years?" pg. 413: They [Negroes] saw that it was not enough to vote, they must exercise greater control over administration of affairs" pg. 586: "But the uplift and well-being of the mass of men, of the cohorts of common labor was not its ideal or excuse. Profit, income, uncontrolled power in My Business for My Property and for Me-this was the aim and method of the new monarchial dictatorship that displaced democracy in the United States in 1876." pg. 706: "There can be, therefore, neither in the South nor in the nation a successful third party movement."”

John Marchetti

Created about 1 year ago