Washington during Civil War and Reconstruction: Race and Radicalism

✍ Scribed by Robert Harrison

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 356
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In this provocative study Robert Harrison provides new insight into grass-roots Reconstruction after the Civil War and into the lives of those of those most deeply affected, the newly emancipated African Americans. Harrison argues that the District of Columbia, far from being marginal to the Reconstruction story, was central to Republican efforts to reshape civil and political relations, with the capital a testing ground for Congressional policy makers. The study describes the ways in which federal agencies such as the Army and the Freedmen's Bureau attempted to assist Washington's freed population and shows how officials struggled to address the social problems resulting from large-scale African-American migration. It also sheds new light on the political processes that led to the abandonment of Reconstruction and the onset of black disfranchisement. Finally, Washington, DC, during Civil War and Reconstruction is a valuable case study of municipal government in an era when Americans faced the challenges of a new urban-industrial society.

✦ Table of Contents

Title......Page 5
Copyright......Page 6
Contents......Page 7
Abbreviations......Page 9
Foreword......Page 11
A “Western Palmyra”......Page 13
A Southern City......Page 18
A Model City......Page 24
The Capital and the Union......Page 28
Introduction......Page 32
The Question of Loyalty......Page 33
The Capital of the Union......Page 35
“An Asylum for Free Negroes”......Page 39
Contraband Labor......Page 46
The “Contraband System”......Page 48
Freedmens Aid......Page 60
Conclusion......Page 68
Introduction......Page 72
The Work of the Bureau......Page 78
Sanitation and Housing......Page 82
The Problem of Relief......Page 88
“A Vast Labor Bureau”......Page 98
The Bureau as an Urban Welfare Agency......Page 116
An “Experimental Garden for the Propagation of Political Hybrids”......Page 121
“The First Practical Triumph of Freedom”......Page 123
Eradicating the Traces of Slavery......Page 129
“A Pillar of Fire to Illumine the Footsteps of Millions”: Black Suffrage......Page 132
The Inauguration of Biracial Education......Page 145
The Troublesome Question of Mixed Schools......Page 149
A Partial Reconstruction......Page 154
Introduction......Page 162
The Mayoralty of Richard Wallach: Washingtons Ancien Régime......Page 163
The Rise of the Republican Party......Page 172
The Election of Sayles J. Bowen......Page 177
Improvements......Page 182
The Reform Republicans......Page 187
Conclusion......Page 192
Introduction......Page 196
Black Voting......Page 198
The Style of Grassroots Republican Politics......Page 204
Taking It to the Streets......Page 211
“The Great Want Is Work”......Page 214
“To Become a People”......Page 218
“A Badly Governed City”......Page 223
Congress as a City Council......Page 225
The Charities of the District......Page 231
The District Board of Health......Page 242
The “Great Ditch”: The Washington Canal......Page 257
Washington and the B. & O. Monopoly......Page 266
A City and a State......Page 278
“Worthy of the Nation”......Page 282
Reform of the Municipal Government......Page 285
The Origins of the Territory......Page 291
The Meteoric Career of the Board of Public Works......Page 297
The Imposition of Direct Rule......Page 305
Reasons for the End of Representative Government......Page 314
“The Capital of the Whole Nation”......Page 323
Reconstruction in the District of Columbia......Page 328
“The Paradise of Free Negroes”?......Page 334
Congress and the District......Page 338
Index......Page 343