Lecture 1:

SLIDE—WHY 1877?

So, why do we start the second half of U.S. history course in 1877? 

Well, 1877, marked the end of Reconstruction. This was a 12 year period during which the Union Army (or United States Army) more or less occupied the American South to enforce republican reforms around race and to keep southern states in the Union. 

In this lecture, we are going to do a whirlwind tour of the United States in the couple of decades preceding 1877. This will be a review for some of you and new for others. For now, just try to attend to major trends.

SLIDE—OUTLINE

Okay, here is a quick outline of what we will cover in this lecture. 

1. What was Reconstruction?
2. Racial Violence
3. Economic Shifts
4. The West
5. Immigrants & Nativists

SLIDE—1 RECONSTRUCTION

SLIDE—SHERMAN’S “MARCH TO THE SEA”

We are going to start with reconstruction. 

Reconstruction is an incredibly complex period that transformed almost every region of the United States. We’re going to focus on the south.  

The Civil War lasted from 1861-1865. The Union military left the South in a poor state. Georgia was the most famous example of this. General William Tecumsah Sherman is often credited with developing the idea of “total war” when with “March to the Sea” through Georgia. 

Sherman not only destroyed military targets, but he also burned cities and fields, dug up roads, and ripped up railroad tracks for the iron. Sherman’s goal was to ensure that Georgia would not have the capacity to rebel again. 

Milledgeville was the capital of Georgia at the time. This made it a critical target. The town, though, was largely spared from destruction. Places like Milledgeville are important to take seriously, because it is easy to imagine that the Union military left total and complete devastation in its wake. It did some places. But the Confederate army ransacked their own homes for food, shelter, and iron.

The other reason for the South’s troubles following the war was that white southerners could no longer force Black people to work. The South had only functioned as a result of a brutal regime of forced labor. Without enslaved workers, the economy folded.      

SLIDE–RECONSTRUCTION

After the war, the Union Army occupied the South intending to rebuild it and reintegrate it into the Union. They faced two problems. First, there was a huge population of white traitors. Second, there was new free Black population with no land, no businesses, no schools, and little economic or social foundation. 

As the Federal Government in D.C. worked to solve this problem, they centralized power in a way that the country had never seen. 

SLIDE—SOUTHERN POLICY AFTER THE WAR

Following the war state and local legislatures throughout the south passed what were called “Black codes.” Black people could own property, marry, and make contracts, but they had few other rights. Black men could not serve on juries, orphaned children were “apprenticed” to their former enslavers, vagrancy laws required Black men to carry papers proving they were employed. If not, they were arrested and leased to landowners. This is what we call convict labor. These laws were meant to recreate slavery in all but name. 

In response, Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts. These gave Black men the vote, abolished Black codes before they could rejoin the Union, and enforced Black suffrage with military force. With the enfranchisement of Black southerners Republican and Union General, Ulyssees S. Grant nearly swept the former confederacy. During reconstruction, 22 Black congressmen, 2 Black senators, and over 600 Black state legislators were elected to office. 

After 1877, the Reconstruction Acts were revoked, and Black politicians lost their place in government. In 1955, there were only 3 Black congressional members. This was the largest number since 1877. 

SLIDE—2) RACIAL VIOLENCE

Racial violence in the Reconstruction period took three major forms: 

1. semi-spontaneous riots against Black political authority.  
2. interpersonal fights
3. organized vigilante groups. The 1866 massacres in Memphis and New Orleans 1866 
   1. In Memphis, over three days 
      1. 46 Black were killed
      1. 75 black injured 
      1. over 100 black persons robbed
      1. 5 black women raped,
      1. 91 homes destroyed
      1. 4 churches destroyed
      1. 8 schools destroyed
      1. 2 white people killed
   1. These have traditionally been called riots—they were massacres, if not small-scale rebellions that targeted freed Black communities.

SLIDE—KLU KLUX KLAN

This is when we see the first organized white supremacist groups emerge. 

The Ku Klux Klan is the most famous of societies. Between 1870 and 1872, the KKK killed 24 people in Panola County, Mississippi. Nearby in Lafayette, County, Klansmen drowned 30 Black people in a single mass murder.

The federal government, to varying degrees, used troops to protect freed people and to enforce their laws. But when reconstruction ended, the South developed Jim Crow laws, which is the topic of a later lecture.

SLIDE—3) ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION

SLIDE—ECONOMICS OF FREEDOM

The years before the Civil War were some of the most profitable in the South’s economy’s history. The cotton they grew fed textile mills throughout the United States and Europe. The most valuable thing in the south, though, was not cotton. It was enslaved people, who were worth roughly $3 billion. 

In the North, the wealthy and middle class tended to be relatively liquid—meaning they had money in a bank, not tied down in material investments. In the South, most wealth was based on human capital—by which I mean the value of enslaved people. Enslaved people were a bank’s collateral, if the person who asked for the loan could not pay. The value of human property in he souh is equal over $115 trillion today (CHECK THIS!!!). Today, the value of all real estate in the U.S. is $70 trillion.

 So, imagine if every piece of real estate everyone owned was suddenly valueless, then multiply it by 1.6. That is an earth-shattering disappearance of capital. 

In contrast to the South, by 1877 northerners could buy clothing made in a New England factory and light their homes with kerosene oil from Pennsylvania. The Midwest produced seas of grain that fed the country and Europe. And, in the Rocky Mountains and the Sierras, settlers were finding silver and gold, and fur traders were selling buffalo hides to excited urbanites throughout the country.

An extensive network of banks and a rapidly expanding railroad system connected the regional economies of the United States as never before. We will talk extensively about the consequences of banks and railroads as we move forward. 

SLIDE—THE WEST

SLIDE—LIST OF LARGE FINDS

Systematic expansion into what we generally refer to as the West began with the Gold Rush in 1848. Similar precious metal strikes occurred throughout the West, including:

1. California, 1848 
2. Colorado, 1858
3. Nevada, 1859
4. Idaho, 1860
5. Montana, 1863
6. South Dakota, 1874. 

With these findings, new groups of immigrants from Mexico, Scandinavia, and China began to flow into the West. These people would work in towns, mines, provide new technologies, and the Chinese especially would build the transcontinental railroads. We’ll talk about this more, but the laboring class often clashed with immigrants, whom they saw as the reason that wages were down or that work was hard to find. 

SLIDE—HOMESATEAD ACT

The Homestead Act of 1862 was the main motivator for Americans to move west and colonize the plains. The federal government passed the Homestead Act. Any white American citizen—or person who declared that they intended to become a citizen—could head west, choose a 160-acre surveyed section of land, file a claim, and begin “improving” the land by plowing fields, building houses and barns, or digging wells, and, after five years of living on the land, could apply for the official title deed to the land. 

Hundreds of thousands of Americans used the Homestead Act to acquire land. The Western planes were transformed by the Homestead Act. 

1. Kansas grew from 10,000 farms in 1860 to 239,000 by 1880. 
2. Texas grew from 200,000 people in 1850 to 3,000,000 in 1900.

SLIDE—REMOVAL

There were roughly 350,000 Native Americans who lived between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast in 1860 (the year the Civil War started). The Indigenous population would decrease by 100,000 by 1890—just shy of 30%.

Civil War generals, like General Sherman, and Black regiments, known as Buffalo Soldiers, played a critical role in the country’s total war against Native Americans. 

The wars started before the Civil War, but they really took off during it. Much like the Civil War, war against Indigenous people was total war.                                                                                                                  

For example, between 1863 and 1866, a famed fur trapper and Indian Agent named Kit Carson worked to remove 10,000 Diné (Navajo) people from their homelands. The Bosque Redondo Reservation is considered by many to be one of the first interment—or concentration—camps in history. 3,500 Diné died in three years.  

Sometimes the massacres were more direct. Fore example, November 29, 1864. Colonel John Chivington ordered his seven hundred militiamen to move on the Cheyenne and Arapahoe peace camp near Fort Lyon at Sand Creek in eastern Colorado. Against orders from the governor, the men slaughtered 150 people who believed they were under the military’s protection. 2/3rds being were women and children. Chivington’s men killed between 150 and 200 men, women, and children. They took scalps, unborn fetuses, and male and female genitalia as trophies. 

SLIDE—CONCLUDING REMARKS

So, that is the state of the country in 1877—at the start of what historians call “The Gilded Age.”