Washington during Civil War and Reconstruction
Race and Radicalism

Provides new insight into grassroots reconstruction after the Civil War, and into the lives of the newly emancipated African Americans.

Robert Harrison (Author)

9781107002326, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 August 2011

354 pages, 3 tables
23.3 x 16 x 3 cm, 0.64 kg

'… offers an informative analysis of city governance in the district of Colombia amid the tumult of secession, war, emancipation, and postbellum politics.' Robert S. Wolff, Journal of Southern History

In this provocative study, Robert Harrison provides new insight into grassroots reconstruction after the Civil War and into the lives 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.

Foreword Phillipp Schofield
1. Introduction
2. Wartime Washington
3. The Freedmen's Bureau in the District of Columbia
4. An 'experimental garden for the propagation of political hybrids': congressional reconstruction in the District of Columbia
5. Reconstructing the city government
6. Race, radicalism, and reconstruction: grassroots Republican politics
7. A city and a state: governing the District of Columbia
8. From biracial democracy to direct rule: the end of self-government in the nation's capital
9. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], History of the Americas [HBJK]