Legal Legacies of War and Reconstruction

2019 ◽  
pp. 76-102
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Ranney
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Slave System ◽  
Economic Independence ◽  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Black Economic ◽  
Freed Slaves ◽  
Black Codes ◽  
Black Code

The Civil War destroyed Mississippi’s slave system and its antebellum economy. From 1865 to 1890, lawmakers struggled to define the legal status and rights of newly-freed slaves and to build a new, more diversified economy. The era was marked by sharp legal shifts. Mississippi created one of the nation’s harshest postwar black codes (1866) but then followed a more liberal course during Reconstruction, enacting one of the nation’s first anti-segregation laws (1873). After Reconstruction, the state’s 1890 constitutional convention showed other Southern states how they could prevent blacks from voting while avoiding federal scrutiny. The shifting times were exemplified by Horatio Simrall, a legislator and judge who helped create the 1866 black code and 1890 anti-suffrage provisions but also upheld the 1873 anti-segregation law; and Isaiah Montgomery, who fought for black economic independence but, to the surprise of both races, supported the 1890 suffrage restrictions and urged his fellow blacks not to resist.

Looking for Chamberlain

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Kristopher A. Teters
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Military Strategy ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Fugitive Slaves ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
Freed Slaves

This study challenges much of the current historical literature about the American Civil War by arguing that western Union officers carried out a practical emancipation policy as part of a pragmatic military strategy, rather than an idealistic moral opposition to slavery. While officers came to accept emancipation as a useful instrument to win the war, their racial attitudes changed very little. In the early stages of the war, the army’s policies towards fugitive slaves were inconsistent and influenced by an officer’s individual attitudes toward slavery. The Second Confiscation Act of 1862 and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 caused a shift in army policy to become more consistent and emancipationist. Officers, however, carried out emancipation primarily for the army’s benefit, as freed slaves could help the army as pioneers, laborers, servants, and soldiers. Union officers were committed to winning the war and saving the Union, and emancipation proved a practical policy to accomplish these goals.

Education Follows the Flag

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christi M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Education System ◽  
School Systems ◽  
Mass Education ◽  
The South ◽  
Integrated Education ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Education Groups

Why did integrated education generate so much interest after the Civil War? This chapter contextualizes the anti- caste movement and the postwar rush to launch a mass education system in the South. Integrationists argued that segregation— and maintaining two separate school systems— demanded an irrational and excessive cost. But by filling the void, charitable funds enabled this disparity. Benevolent organizations relieved Southern states of their responsibilities to enforce constitutional commitments to public education. This reliance on private largesse— whether through benevolent organizations or the capitalist philanthropy that followed in subsequent years— had profound consequences for the kind of education groups were able to access.

Irreconcilable Differences

2020 ◽  
pp. 105-130
Author(s):  
Allison Dorothy Fredette
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
Political World ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Secession Crisis ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores the devastating experience of the Civil War in the border South. The chapter opens with the secession crisis, which gave western Virginians their long-awaited opportunity to break away from their eastern neighbors. A close analysis of their debates and rhetoric in the secession convention, as well as in their later constitutional convention, reveals the impact of the border South’s particular form of manhood. Without their unique understanding of hierarchy, restraint, submission, and emotion, western Virginians may not have ventured down the path to statehood. This section demonstrates the importance of gendered ideals, forged within the walls of the household, to the political world. The second half of the chapter reveals how the brutal conflict in the border South reinforced the importance of domestic ties and a sense of mutuality within the home.

scholarly journals “Slaves of the State”: Christianity and Convict Labor in the Postbellum South

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 651
Author(s):  
Brad Stoddard
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Convict Labor ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Labor Camp ◽  
Protestant Christianity

In the wake of the Civil War, southern states incarcerated record numbers of black men and women, closed their prisons, and sent convicted criminals to convict lease camps. Inside these camps, convict laborers worked for businesses, for individual entrepreneurs, on plantations, and on public works projects contracted to private businesses. Due to the Thirteenth Amendment’s “slaves of the state” clause, these laborers were legally classified as slaves and treated as such by labor camp operators. Conditions inside these camps were quite harsh, and in most camps, state-sanctioned Protestant socialization efforts were the laborers’ primary source of leisure. This essay provides a preliminary overview of the convergence of Protestant Christianity and convict lease camps as it calls scholars to explore this convergence in greater detail in future scholarship.

scholarly journals Law, Violence, and Property Expropriation in Syria: Impediments to Restitution and Return

Land ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Stubblefield ◽  
Sandra Joireman
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
The Government ◽  
Disproportionate Number ◽  
Property Restitution

After eight years of civil war, parts of Syria are now free from conflict. In recognition of the return to peace, the government officially welcomes back all who fled the country to escape violence. Yet, a pattern of property expropriation supported by the government during the war limits the ability of some to return and reclaim their homes and businesses. We argue here that intentional changes to law and policy regarding property rights during the war has led to asset losses for members of groups opposed to the government and created a barrier to property restitution and the return of these groups. We examine legal documents and secondary sources identifying government actions and their impact, noting the proliferation of laws that systematically erode the property rights of people who lack proximity, legal status, and regime allies. As the results of these laws manifest after the war, a disproportionate number of Syrians who opposed the government will find themselves without the houses, land, and property they held before the war began.

Resuscitation and Surgery for Soldiers of the American Civil War (1861–1865)

1985 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Watson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
United States Army ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Surgeon General ◽  
Southern States ◽  
The North ◽  
Surgical History ◽  
History Of

On June 2, 1862, William A. Hammond, Surgeon General of the United States Army, announced the intention of his office to collect material for the publication of a “Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1861–1865)” (1), usually called the Civil War of the United States of America, or the War Between the Union (the North; the Federal Government) and the Confederacy of the Southern States. Forms for the monthly “Returns of Sick and Wounded” were reviewed, corrected and useful data compiled from these “Returns” and from statistics of the offices of the Adjutant General (payroll) and Quartermaster General (burial of decreased soldiers).

Afterword

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Eugene Rivers
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Slave Resistance ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Over Time

Slave resistance in nineteenth-century Florida, while reflecting many similarities with respect to experiences reported for bondpeople in other southern states, nonetheless differed significantly. But what made Florida bondservants and their experiences unusual? The fact was that Florida’s history, geography, and topography combined to set a unique stage for its rebels and runaways. Unlike other southern states, Florida boasted a matchless history as a runaway slave haven, the reality of which changed little over time, at least until the final countdown to the Civil War. Freedom-seeking bondpeople knew about and had sought refuge in its numerous runaway settlements and vast, virtually unpopulated expanses dating back centuries to the opening of the Spanish era. Maroon communities eventually dotted the peninsula, their existence making resistance possible and revolts more likely to succeed. In these settlements, black runaways and their descendants could live free lives while providing for their families as they persisted in a commitment to defend loved ones, if necessary, unto death....

scholarly journals THE U.S. FREEDMEN'S BUREAU IN POST-CIVIL WAR RECONSTRUCTION

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Fleischman ◽  
Thomas Tyson ◽  
David Oldroyd
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American South ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
Black Children ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Freedmen's Bureau ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Codes ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Plantation System

The transition from slavery to freedom in the post-Civil War American South featured the efforts of the Freedmen's Bureau (FB) to help ex-slaves overcome an extremely hostile, racist environment that included the need to articulate new labor relations structures given the demise of the plantation system, to overcome the limitations on equality legislated by the infamous Black Codes, to address the pressing need to educate masses of highly illiterate black children, and the need to provide protection for freedmen from unscrupulous landowners. This paper seeks to measure the degree to which accounting and those performing accounting functions for the FB were able to ameliorate these dire conditions that have caused Reconstruction to be perceived as one of the most negative epochs in the history of American democracy.

Repressive Legislation: Slave Codes, Northern Black Laws, and Southern Black Codes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Middleton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Southern States ◽  
William Lloyd Garrison ◽  
Black Laws ◽  
Black Codes

Beginning in the 1630s, colonial assemblies in English America and later the new United States used legislation and constitutions to enslave Africans and deny free blacks civil rights, including free movement, freedom of marriage, freedom of occupation and, of course, citizenship and the vote. Across the next two centuries, blacks and a minority of whites critiqued the oppressive racialist system. Blacks employed varied tactics to challenge their enslavement, from running away to inciting revolts. Others used fiery rhetoric and printed tracts. In the 1760s, when whites began to search for political and philosophical arguments to challenge what they perceived as political oppression from London, they labeled their experience as “slavery.” The colonists also developed compelling arguments that gave some of them the insight that enslaving Africans was as wrong as what they called British oppression. The Massachusetts lawyer James Otis wiped the mirror clean in The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, stating “The colonists, black and white . . . are free-born British subjects . . . entitled to all the essential civil rights.” The Declaration of Independence polished the stained mirror by asserting, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” However, the Constitution of the United States negated these gains by offering federal protection for slavery; it was a covenant with death, as abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison later asserted. After the Revolution, many states passed black laws to deprive blacks of the same rights as whites. Blacks commonly could not vote, testify in court against a white, or serve on juries. States barred black children from public schools. The Civil War offered the promise of equality with whites, but when the war ended, many southern states immediately passed black codes to deny blacks the gains won in emancipation.

US South remains distinctive as divisions sharpen

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
The South ◽  
Us South ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 19Th Century

Significance The US South, defined as the eleven states of the 19th-century Confederacy, was a Democratic stronghold for 100 years after the Civil War. Now, with some of the country’s heaviest concentrations of Black Democratic supporters and White evangelical Republican voters, it encompasses the intensified schisms in contemporary politics. Impacts There will be seven Senate races in the South in November, two of which will not have an incumbent. Nine Southern states will have Republican governors in 2022, with Republican-controlled legislatures in ten. Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat who gave Republican Ted Cruz a close Senate race in 2018, is running for governor of Texas.

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