HISTORY This Week: Reconstruction

HTW Presents: Reconstruction

In this miniseries, HISTORY This Week takes listeners from the Civil War to Civil Rights to uncover the true cost of putting the country back together.

Reconstruction I: Secession on Trial

May 10, 1865. Jefferson Davis is awakened by gunshots. The president of the defeated and disbanded Confederate States of America is on the run, and today, federal troops finally catch him. His arrest puts the face of the Confederacy behind bars. But it also creates a problem for federal officials: what exactly do we do with this guy? How will they hold Davis accountable for his acts without turning him into a martyr for his cause? And then there’s the larger question: how can they piece a shattered nation back together?

• William Blair: emeritus professor of history from Pennsylvania State University and emeritus director of the Richards Civil War Era Center

• Christy Coleman: executive director of the Jamestown Yorktown foundation and former president of the American Civil War Museum

• Hilary Green: associate professor of history in the department of gender and race studies at the University of Alabama and the author of Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865-1890

• Hasan Kwame Jeffries: associate professor of history at Ohio State University and editor of Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement

• Cynthia Nicoletti: professor of law at the University of Virginia and the author of Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis

• John Reeves: author of The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee: The Forgotten Case Against an American Icon

• Thanks also to Edward Ayers, David Blight, Heather Cox Richardson, Adam Domby, Zebulon Miletsky, and William Sturkey.

• The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America by Edward Ayers

• Why Didn’t the North Hang Some Rebels?: The Postwar Debate Over Punishment for Treason by William Blair

• With Malice towards Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era by William Blair

• The Record of Murders and Outrages: Racial Violence and the Fight over Truth at the Dawn of Reconstruction by William Blair

• Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David Blight

• What This Cruel War Was Over by Ta-Nehisi Coates

• The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory by Adam Domby

• Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 by W.E.B. Du Bois

• Make Good the Promises: Reclaiming Reconstruction and Its Legacies edited by Kinshasha Holman Conwill and Paul Gardullo

• Treason on Trial: The United States v. Jefferson Davis by Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez

• How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America by Heather Cox Richardson

Click here to download a transcript of the episode.

Reconstruction II: The First Presidential Impeachment

May 16, 1868. The Capitol is filled with spectators, anxiously trying to predict how each Senator will vote. It’s the first presidential impeachment trial in American history, and its outcome will have profound effects on Reconstruction, the great project of rebuilding the nation after the Civil War. What made many members of Congress declare President Andrew Johnson unfit to lead that effort? And what motivated this former ally of Abraham Lincoln to declare himself an enemy of true Reconstruction?

• William Blair: emeritus professor of history from Pennsylvania State University and emeritus director of the Richards Civil War Era Center

• Hilary Green: associate professor of history in the department of gender and race studies at the University of Alabama and the author of Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865-1890

• Hasan Kwame Jeffries: associate professor of history at Ohio State University and editor of Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement

• Robert Levine: professor of English at the University of Maryland College Park, and author of The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

• Manisha Sinha: Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut, author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition, and author of a forthcoming book, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: A New History of Reconstruction, 1860-1900, from Liveright (W.W. Norton), 2022

• David Stewart: author of Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy

• John Reeves: author of The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee: The Forgotten Case Against an American Icon

• Thanks also to Edward Ayers, David Blight, Heather Cox Richardson, Adam Domby, Zebulon Miletsky, and William Sturkey.

• Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David Blight

• Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 by W.E.B. Du Bois

• Make Good the Promises: Reclaiming Reconstruction and Its Legacies edited by Kinshasha Holman Conwill and Paul Gardullo

• The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation by Brenda Wineapple

Click here to download a transcript of the episode.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher

Reconstruction III: Eric Foner and Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction

In 1935, famed Black sociologist and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois published Black Reconstruction, a revolutionary reassessment of the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War. The book was also a critique of the flawed way others had been telling the story—including leading scholars of the day. Sally Helm sits down with professors Eric Foner and Henry Louis Gates Jr. to discuss Du Bois’ insights. They hone in on his argument that a biased portrayal of Reconstruction was used for over a century to justify the oppression of Black Americans.

• Eric Foner: DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University

• Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University

• Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880 by W.E.B. Du Bois

• Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution - 1863-1877 by Eric Foner

• Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Click here to download a transcript of the episode.

Reconstruction IV: Voting Rights At Last

May 26, 1965. One hundred years after the Civil War, Congress is debating a bill whose goal is to enforce the 15th amendment, which, in 1870, promised the right to vote regardless of race. But that’s not what happened. Now the Civil Rights movement is saying: It’s time to make real the promises of the Constitution for all Americans. The forces that undermined the First Reconstruction, and gutted the 15th Amendment, are resisting those demands. In the middle stands Lyndon B. Johnson, a Southern Senator with a record of opposing civil rights. Robert Caro, acclaimed journalist and Johnson biographer, tells us, what will change Johnson’s mind and turn him into a champion of the Voting Rights Act? And how will he manage the impossible task of getting it passed when so many Southern Senators are hellbent against it?

• Robert Caro: author of The Years of Lyndon Johnson series

• Wilfred Codrington III: assistant professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, and co-author of The People’s Constitution: 200 Years, 27 Amendments, and the Promise of a More Perfect Union

• Robert Greene II: assistant professor of history at Claflin University, and co-editor of Invisible No More: The African American Experience at the University of South Carolina

• Clarence Lusane: professor and former Chairman of Howard University’s Department of Political Science and author of The Black History of the White House

• Lerone A. Martin: Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial professor in religious studies and Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University

• Thanks also to David Blight, Heather Cox Richardson, Kari Frederickson, Joseph Lowndes, Gary May, Zebulon Miletsky, and Tyler Parry. And thank you to Simon Adler.

• Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III by Robert Caro

• The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson IV by Robert Caro

• The United States Needs a Third Reconstruction by Wilfred Codrington III

• The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 by Kari Frederickson

• Make Good the Promises: Reclaiming Reconstruction and Its Legacies edited by Kinshasha Holman Conwill and Paul Gardullo

• From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism by Joseph Lowndes

• Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy by Gary May

• Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein

• Before Busing: A History of Boston's Long Black Freedom Struggle by Zebulon Vance Miletsky

Click here to download a transcript of the episode.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher