Reconstruction-Readings

Reconstruction 1
JM
Reconstruction: Conservative and Radical Phases 1863-1877

Reconstruction has been subjected to varying interpretations has historiographical debates. Under this rubric we will outline, briefly, the broader interpretative framework of the Reconstruction Era.

Model questions
1) Discuss the various interpretations of the aims, programmes and results of the Presidential and Radical Reconstruction
2) Critically analyse the Radical Reconstruction Programme of the south after the Civil War.
3) “The Period of reconstruction was an age of Hate”. Comment.
4) Examine the historiographical debate on the Presidential and Radical Reconstruction Programmes.
5) Is it correct to describe the Radical Reconstruction period as a “Tragic Era”?
6) Evaluate Congressional reconstruction and its impact on the South.
7) What were the reasons for the conflict between Presidential and Congressional reconstruction programmes?

Recommended Readings

Grob, B N and Billias. Interpretations in American History: Patters and Perspectives. Chapter: 11: The Reconstruction Era: Constructive or Destructive?. 431-482
Tindall, George Brown and David Shi. 1992. America: A Narrative History, vol. 2. London: W.W. Norton and Company. Chapter 18: Reconstruction: North and South. 693-731.
Randall, James and Donald David. 1961. The Civil War and Reconstruction (second edition). Boston: D C Heath and Company. Chapter 31-39.

Kaushik, R P. 1983. Significant Themes in American History. Delhi: Ajanta Books International. Chapter 7, 122-141.

Du Bois, W. E. B., and David L. Lewis. 1992. Black Reconstruction in America. New York: Atheneum.
Foner, Eric. 1988. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. 1st ed. New York: Harper & Row.
Stampp, Kenneth M. 1965. The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877. 1st ed. New York: Knopf.
Woodward, C. Vann. 1991. Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wright, Gavin. 1996. Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy since the Civil War. Louisiana pbk. ed. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
Du Bois, W. E. B. 1910. “Reconstruction and its Benefits”, Amercian Historical Review, XV, 781-799.
William B Hesseltine. 1935. 'Economic Factors in the Abandonment of Reconstruction'. The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXII, 191-210.



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 all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

--President Lincoln