When they killed him in his pity,When they killed him in his primeOf clemency and calm – When with yearning he was filled To redeem the evil-willed,And, though conqueror, be kind;

But they killed him in his kindness,In their madness and their blindness,And they killed him from behind. There is sobbing of the strong,And a pall upon the land; But the People in their weepingBare an iron hand; Beware the People weepingWhen they bare the iron hand.

He lieth in his blood – The father in his face;They have killed him, the Forgiver – The Avenger takes his place,The Avenger, wisely stern, Who in righteousness shall do What the heavens call him to, And the parricides remand;For they killed him in his kindness,In their madness and their blindness,And his blood is on their hand.

There is sobbing of the strong, And a pall upon the land;But the People in their weeping Bare the iron hand. Beware the People weepingWhen they bare the iron hand.

The Civil War: a war of wounds

Reconstruction: a war of words

What had the Civil War been about?

What did Union victory mean?

Thinking about Reconstruction

“re-construction” … ?“freedom” … ?

Groups: freedmen, white southerners, northerners, abolitionists, Republicans,

Democrats

Four views of Reconstruction:

Lincoln: “Bind up the nation’s wounds.”

Douglass: “The black man is not free until he has the vote.”

Johnson: “The Union as it was, and the Constitution as it is.”

Grant: “Let us have peace.”

The West

Lincoln: what if?

1863 Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan1864 Wade-Davis Bill1865 Thirteenth Amendment

Lincoln assassinated1866 Civil Rights Bill1868 Fourteenth Amendment1870 Fifteenth Amendment1873 Slaughterhouse Cases1876 Battle of Little Bighorn

Johnson (1865-68)

Grant (1868-76)

Timeline:Reconstructing the Nation

Lincoln (1860-65)

PresidentialReconstruction

(1863-1866)

RadicalReconstruction

(1866-1873)

Redemption(1873-1876)

With malice toward none, with charity for all; … let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace…

A man has no time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me I never remember the past against him.

Doesn’t it seem strange that I should be here – I who couldn’t cut a chicken’s head off – with blood running all around me?

Let them go, officers and all. I want submission, and no more bloodshed.

Lincoln was certainly the safest leader a nation could have … A reckless, bold, theorizing, dashing man … might have wrecked our Constitution and ended us in a splendid military despotism.

The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

(Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, 1865)

That means nigger citizenship. That is the last speech he will ever make.

In the progress of nations, negroes have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. Wherever they have been left to their own devices, they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism.

Harper’s Weekly:

“electioneering in the south”, 1868

Harper’s Weekly:

“Of course he wants to vote the Democratic Ticket”, 1876

1868

1876

Wartime: Lincoln (1961-65)

Presidential: Johnson (1865-66)

Redemption (1873-77)

Radical (1866-73)

Ten years from now, the people … will see so clearly the vast benefit of the present proposed Railroads that they will care very little how or by what means they were built.

I belonged to the General Assembly, and knew about what it would do. My investments were made accordingly.

You are mistaken if you suppose that all the evils … result from the carpetbaggers and negroes – the democrats are leagued with them when anything is proposed which promises to pay.

Slavery: “receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent”

Freedom: “placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor, and take care of ourselves”

(Rev. Frazier, 1865)

If I cannot do like the white man, I am not free. (freed slave, 1865)

I had occasion very frequently to notice that porters in stores and laboring men in warehouses, and cart drivers on the streets, had spelling books with them, and were studying them during the time they were not occupied with their work. (Andrews, 1865)

Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot. (Douglass)