Allen C. Guelzo

Reconstruction improved many aspects of black Southerners' lives, at least for a number of years, and left deep scars on a white South that labored diligently to project an image of Northern oppression. The episode closes with an assessment of whether Reconstruction should be judged a success or a moment of lost opportunity for African Americans in the United States.

This episode shifts from the battlefield to the home front. We look at diplomacy and the blockade. The episode examines the difficulty and cost of fielding and maintaining large armies. We discuss Union and Confederate conscription, the ways each side raised money, and the production and delivery of military supplies.

By the 1820s, immigrants flowed through America's seaports from Europe; and with the clearance of Indian resistance, the Northwest Territory was opened by massive government land sales. Many emigrants, however, chose to stay in the cities they first entered, and their numbers soon swelled the size of the American urban population.

Debates in the North over how best to bring the Confederate states back into the Union began while the war still raged. This episode examines the wartime context and continues through Johnson's early presidency. By the end of 1866, the stage was set for a final showdown between the president and Congress in the fight over Reconstruction in the South.

The money, credit, weapons, and French naval and military resources forced the British to shift the focus of their war. British field forces fell under a combined land-and-sea campaign conducted by Washington and the French at Yorktown, where the British surrendered. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 reluctantly conceded American independence.

America is a far more religious society than other Western industrial nations - another example of its exceptionalism. It also tolerated an exotic array of sects and cults, from hippies to the followers of Jim Jones who committed mass suicide in 1978. Religious groups also played a role in the moral-political debates over civil rights, feminism, abortion, homosexuality, and nuclear weapons.

Columbus's discovery of a New World allowed Europeans to, first, exploit natural and human resources, and later, to write new social, economic, and political scripts for their lives in a place where European ideas of society no longer applied.

Deep South states seceded in response to Lincoln's election, but only the crisis at Fort Sumter in April 1861 convinced the Upper South to secede. A range of opinion existed in most slaveholding states regarding secession. This episode also describes the formation of the Confederate States of America.

Congress took control of Reconstruction policy in early 1867. Ulysses S. Grant, who supported Congress, won the presidency in 1868. This episode examines the struggle between Johnson and Congress, analyzes Reconstruction legislation, describes the state governments set up under that legislation in former Confederate states, and assesses the meaning of the election of 1868.

This episode examines the experiences of African Americans on both sides, addressing, among other topics, black soldiers in US military forces, the experience of hundreds of thousands of black refugees in the South, the weakening of the bonds of slavery in much of the Confederacy, and Confederate debates over emancipation late in the conflict.