Construct a historical timeline that includes important dates, events, and historical figures that are part of the history of the Reconstruction period (1863-1877) up through the end of the Progressive Era (1920) that you gleaned from lectures, readings, and films. Simply identify events, historical figures, and dates and write a sentence or two about why each entry is significant to United States history.
Your historical timeline does not have to be fancy. You may simply list the events, historical figures, and dates on the left side of your page (bold them) and then next to your entries, you may write a sentence or two that speaks to the historical significance just underneath them or to the right of them. | Expect that there will be approximately 20-25 entries total in your timeline and please include entries from each week (some from week one, week two, week three, and week four). Start your timeline from the Reconstruction and work your way through the Progressive Era. Please put some effort into this project. It will serve you well when you take your mid-term quiz, and it is simply a great way of reviewing the course material.
Historical Timeline
Reconstruction (1863-1877)
According to Hakim (1994), the history of the United States is recounted from “the end of the civil war” which was in the year 1865 to the early 1900s leading to the social movements. The urbanization of the cities, increase in population, rebuilding of the nations, immigrants residing in the cities, the struggle for the rights of women, labor movement, and a lot of new inventions took place during this era, making this era important in the history of the United States.
Freedman’s Bureau (1862)
President Lincoln established the Freedman’s Bureau to free the people from slavery so that they can acquire other jobs. Freedman’s Bureau was the struggle to give African Americans their freedom. The study by Harrison States (2007) “New Freedmen’s Bureau Historiography” has provided us with a fuller and more detailed picture of the “practical workings of Reconstruction” on the difficult ground of “the postbellum South” by investigating the variances, tensions, and inconsistencies in the agency’s history.
Black Codes (1865)
The southern white democrats were against the rights of the black southerners. As Democrats attempted to retain racial supremacy, overthrow Republican governments, and end Reconstruction, they were frequently met with reckless political violence. Mississippi, which is known for its organized terror “Mississippi Plan” and Georgia, which took a more cautious approach to black men’s disenfranchisement, were two states whose rebuilding programs ended in violence (Klaybor, 2020). As the country grew tired of the failing process, Democrats reclaimed control of the South in the late 1870s, effectively ending Reconstruction.
Fourteenth Amendment
The fourteenth amendment 1866, states “equal civil rights and citizenship for black Americans”. The amendment was approved on July 9, 1868. The “14th Amendment” contains a provision guaranteeing citizenship to “all individuals born or naturalized in the United States”, allowing formerly enslaved people to become citizens.
Lincoln Assassinated and Presidential Reconstruction (1865)
President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on “April 14, 1865”, while attending a special performance of the comedy “Our American Cousin”. According to Schwartz, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination changed him from a divisive president into a revered symbol of his community. It’s a Durkheimian puzzle to figure out what’s causing this astonishing change. It also necessitates new conceptualizations of belief and ritual, as well as consensus and togetherness. These new interpretations are based on “Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religious Life in 1912 and 1965”, and they apply to the “assassinations of James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy”.
Historians had recognized radicalism in South Carolina earlier in the Civil Conflict, but radicalism did not disappear after the war. Despite the devastating effects of the Civil War on the Palmetto State, white South Carolinians maintained their willingness to fight; as they continued to reject federal power, a sense of nationalism evolved. White elites continued to struggle as a result of the terrible devastation left in the wake of Sherman’s march through the state and the federal government’s failure to implement an acceptable Reconstruction plan. The radicalism of South Carolina’s white elites triggered the Civil War, and they didn’t believe the slaughter was in vain, defying the Radical Republicans at every opportunity.
Military Reconstruction Act (1867)
In the “Reconstruction Act of 1867”, Major General John Pope divided the South into five military districts. Colonel John T. Sprague was appointed as the “head of the sub-district of Florida, headquartered at the Tallahassee followed by Jacksonville” (Peek, 1969). On April 1, 1867, Sprague took command of “10 companies of the 7th United States infantry” and 6 companies of the “5th US artillery, totaling 1115 personnel”. The artillery companies guarded the coastal defense bastions at Pensacola, Key West, and the Dry Tortugas, while the infantry companies were dispersed over the state in small detachments of 20 to 30 men apiece. They were tasked with assisting civil authorities in enforcing law and order, as well as acting as a restraining force against civil officials or private individuals who would harm anyone. These troops were also available to assist officials from the Freedmen’s Bureau whenever they were needed. The Civil officers in the district were to serve until their terms expired, as long as they dispensed impartial justice, according to Pope’s order. Officials were also told to avoid undertaking any measure that may discourage residents from participating in the rehabilitation process.
Congressional Reconstruction (1866- 1870)
Through the perspective of democratic citizenship, evaluating the application of the Fourteenth Amendment during Reconstruction. Reconstruction can be understood as an investigation into the various meanings of democratic citizenship, carried out at a time when liberation compelled politicians and political theorists to consider the real-world implications of citizenship. Congress recognized the importance of enacting concrete privileges rather than only declaring abstract goals and did so throughout Reconstruction by introducing a slew of federal legislation aimed at enacting citizenship and its benefits. When viewed by the Freedmen’s Bureau’s activities as well as the arguments and actions of African-American leaders and political actors such as John Mercer Langston, the documents reveal a nascent concept of democratic citizenship that encompassed a variety of civil society events – such as family, religion, politics, commerce, and education – that were seen as required for the achievement of citizenship (Fox, 2004). The “Reconstruction Era legal and political actors” assumed a fairly clear “division of rights into three tiers: civil, political, and social”, as well as the even more dubious notion that they meant to exclude social rights from national citizenship protection.
Tenure of Office Act and Johnson’s Impeachment (1867)
These were the significant issues confronting the US government following the Civil War’s conclusion. Every conceivable scenario would make resolving them difficult. Understanding this period’s history necessitates paying close attention to the words, deeds, and reasons of its important players. The reasons for Andrew Johnson’s opposition to legislative Reconstruction are sometimes linked to intransigence, bigotry, and white supremacy. One episode, though, sticks out. A distinct picture emerges from an examination of primary materials and an assessment of the scholarly literature. Andrew Johnson was a staunch supporter of the Constitution and a firm believer in its rigorous interpretation. Johnson’s veto of the Tenure of Office Act was based on his conviction that it constituted an illegal encroachment of the president’s dismissal authority (Schearer, 2019). Johnson’s reasoning for “vetoing the Act” was compatible with the original conception of the removal power as well as the prior and subsequent practice of Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Supreme Court. The veto bill oath restrained Johnson.
The fifteenth amendment (1870)
Since Howard K. Beale’s call for a “re-evaluation of the Reconstruction period in American history” in 1940, a growing number of revisionist books and articles have appeared. However, there is still more work to be done. Since the days of “William A. Dunning and James Ford Rhodes”, no one has conducted any “fundamental research on the federal Enforcement Acts”. The Acts were the center of Grant’s “Southern policy”, which was a response to the South’s opposition to the radicals’ “Reconstruction program”. The Reconstruction village, which began in “March 1867” and was completed by the summer of 1870, showed signs of disintegrating at its base long until it was completed. The election of 1868 amply illustrated the precarious nature of Republican power, which the radical agenda relied on for success (Swinney, 1962). President Andrew Johnson’s amnesty proclamations of September 7 and December 25, 1868, which restored suffrage for many former Confederates, which did not help matters, and the “Democratic Party’s electoral victories” in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia in 1869 and 1870 were dismal. Most worrisome of all was the way the Ku Klux Klan and other extralegal organizations used “violence and intimidation” to keep black people from voting. Faced with these mounting dangers to the Republican Party’s ascendancy, Congress acted quickly, implementing three laws in one year in 1870-1871 to safeguard the newly-acquired “political and civil rights” of African-Americans. The First Enforcement Act, enacted on May 30, 1870, was lengthy and complicated. It made it illegal for government representatives to discriminate.
Birth of the Populist Movement (1870)
The causes of the well-known “agrarian unrest in the United States between 1870 and 1900” are still up for debate. They are, in part according to a straightforward economic explanation. Falling transportation costs allowed the frontier to be extended, allowing farmers to receive the price level less the transaction expenses of delivering their products to market (Klein, Persson, & Sharp, 2020). Many people thought these expenses were disproportionately high, owing to train companies’ claimed market strength and “middlemen’s discriminatory” actions, with farmers closest to the border being the most disadvantaged. The protest is adversely connected to wheat prices, cost of transportation, and railway system density, as measured by vote shares for the Populists in the 1892 Presidential elections.
“Buffalo Soldiers” (1870)
“Scouting with the Buffalo Soldiers: Lieutenant Powhatan Clarke, Frederic Remington, and the Tenth United States Cavalry in the Southwest” by John P. Langellier tells the story of Lieutenant Powhatan Clarke, a white southerner who served in the United States Army after the Civil War. Langellier delves into Clarke’s biography, demonstrating how he engaged with and comprehended the US-Mexico boundaries. According to Langellier, Clarke’s experiences, during the period when time commanding the “Black troops” from the “Tenth Cavalry”, aided in the transformation of a rambunctious and impulsive adolescent into a capable military officer and combat commander. Scouting with the “Buffalo Soldiers” does this by providing an interesting story about the rough realities of life in the southwestern boundaries.
However, the criticism does not detract from Langellier’s overall worth. Powhatan Clarke’s study adds to the chronology of the post–Civil War United States Army and the Southwest boundaries, as well as shedding light on underutilized resources, demonstrating how historians can approach these themes from the ground up.
The “Civil Rights Act of 1865” was declared unconstitutional in 1883.
Court cases exposed Black women straddling race, class, and gender as they sought a place in the Ladies’ Car and proclaimed their “right to dignity within American society” during a period of uncertain legal culture between the “Civil War and the legal imposition of Jim Crow” (Ingersoll, 2019). Before the establishment of Jim Crow legislation, free black women attempted, with some success, to gain entrance to upper-class “Lady Cars” by establishing their position as “ladies on the railroad”. There was an uncertain legal culture before “the Civil Rights Act” was deemed unconstitutional in 1883; after 1883, there was a stable legal culture around the validity of the “Jim Crow doctrine”. Lawyers used the ambiguity surrounding black women’s class position following Liberation to win court disputes (Ingersoll, 2018). Using racially and gendered terminology, the lawyers established a “Femininity Master Frame and a Jim Crow Master Frame”.
Stabilization and Reconstruction
The Army preferred to make strategies for long-term success in challenging battles, ground troops are assigned to a sequence of shorter-term, outcome-oriented operations. The goal is to effectively accomplish the task and then return for the next tactical order to finish operational needs that will contribute to an overall strategic triumph (Chido, 2021). As beneficial as this technique may be for combat victory, it must be incompatible with stabilization.
Disenfranchisement of blacks (1878)
To disenfranchise African American voters, Southern governments have utilized a variety of tactics. There is a scarcity of empirical data on the effectiveness of these strategies. We present a one-of-a-kind Louisiana data set allowing objectively documenting voter registration rates from the end of Reconstruction to the current day. voter registration numbers varied over time in reaction to state constraints using simple time-series data. Black registration rates fell by roughly 30 percentage points as a result of the “Understanding Clause”, with no influence on white registration (Keele, Cubbison, & White, 2021). The findings of this research have a significant impact on understanding the possibility of discrimination in the application of current, allegedly neutralized voter eligibility standards, such as voter ID legislation, which give local officials significant latitude in deciding voter eligibility.
Beginnings of the ghettos (immigrant and black) in the 1880s
The first assessments of “immigrant residential segregation” in the “United States from 1850 to 1940” are consistent across time and geography. To accomplish so, we adopt the Logan–Parman approach for immigrants, quantifying segregation based on the next-door neighbor’s nationality. The study by Eriksson & Ward states that (2019) novel patterns such as high levels of segregation in rural areas, small industrial towns, and for non-European resources, in addition to establishing a constant “measure of segregation”. Immigrants in the early “twentieth century” spatially socialized slowly, resulting in an individual experience that was distinct from that of natives for decades after arrival.
“Psuedo-scientific”racism
When the National Party came to “power in South Africa in 1948”, education represented racist thought and practices, and educational institutions implemented the philosophy of separate development. Government policies and legislation reflected declarations of the African child’s inferiority. The roots of these thoughts and behavior can be directed back to existing “racist pseudo-scientific notions” that categorize and view African children as mentally inferior. “Pseudo-scientific notions” about the human intellect had become ingrained in racial superiority thought and practice, especially in the first half of the twentieth century. These claims rationalized segregation’s social, political, and ideological structures at the time, and they were part of South Africa’s mentality at that time (Lewis, 2018). Even though we live in a “democratic and inclusive society” that promotes the growth and acknowledgment of integrity of the entire child, racist ideas and practices persist, particularly in education.
Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal” (1896)
The history of structural racialization is rarely discussed by the general public, community leaders, or legislators. Despite this lack of public awareness, a substantial body of scholarship demonstrates the relevance of urban development history as a tool for preserving “Plessy v. Ferguson’s segregationist” mindset. Understanding present difficulties such as segregation, concentrated poverty, and racial inequities requires an understanding of the “history of structural racialization in development” (Reece, 2021). The case study that follows looks at “(two Ohio community-based initiatives (in Cleveland and Columbus)” that employed a historical examination of racial discrimination in progress practices as the emphasis of a community involvement approach. Surveys, participant observations, and interviews demonstrate the results, advantages, and consequences of involving stakeholders in the use of historical discrimination data to influence current policymaking. The study backs up the necessity of public engagement methods in exposing the long-term consequences of Plessy’s “separate but equal” ideology.
Spanish American War (1900)
“The Spanish American War of 1898” had a very dramatic build-up and aftermath of a major “colonial conflict”. This conflict spanned half of the world, from the Caribbean islands of “Cuba and Puerto Rico to the Philippines in the northeastern Pacific Ocean”.From private and small-scale to formal and specified large-scale maps, the Philippines and Puerto Rico were the shiftings of the cartographic coverage of hitherto distant colonial territories, called the “Imperialist consciousness” (Losang, & Demhardt, 2018). The evolution of cartography in the aforementioned territories from the 1850s to the early 1900s, with a focus on mandates, public necessities, publication formats, and content changes.
Brownville Affray (1906)
Brownsville Affray, a 1906 incident that resulted in President Theodore Roosevelt’s participation, will long be carved in the memories of former Confederate states and, Southern Whites of the logic for not accoutering the Blacks (Harris & Lewis, 2019). This is thought to have prompted a comparable, but even more deadly uprising. Eleven years later, the same thing happened in Texas. “Black soldiers stationed in Brownsville, Texas”, are accused of instigating a disturbance in a “protest of the residents”.
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1910)
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909 as an integrated group to combat “racism in the United States”, instead of viewing the matter as solely a Southern concern. It is the oldest civil rights group in the United States, and it is still active (Sartain, 2020). “The National Negro League” was the organization’s initial name, but on May 30, 1910, it was changed to the NAACP. The NAACP was founded to promote racial justice and unification through legal cases, “legislative lobbying, and public campaigns”. Early initiatives included campaigning for national anti-lynching legislation, pursuing desegregation in sectors such as “housing and higher education” by the United States Supreme Court, and demanding the right to vote.
World War I in Europe (1914)
The essential subject of how the fight altered “the American way of war in the twentieth century” is written in a colorful style bringing the era to life. The most significant reasons for the war were social reforms, “the Treaty of Versailles”, military strategy, Homefront mobilization soldier experiences, and military strategy. Jennifer D. Keene (2021) discusses the war’s impact on “social justice movements”, including those headed by “female suffragists, temperance advocates, civil rights campaigners”, and Progressives who fought to make America a safer place.
Des Moines Experiment (1917)
Exploring the “right of the respondent’s defense”, concentrating on the Des Moines tribunal of the Des Moines capability to consider the petitioners that claim to take a look at the various tribes in the “Diocese of Des Moines”. the law regulating tribunal authority in the Latin and also in the Eastern Churches till MI, and outlines a few difficulties that have developed in American tribunals which affected the right to defense (Westphal, 2020). The claims of the Catholic Church to resolve marriage matters, the capacity of persons to bring complaints, and the judgment of competence.
1919 Red Summer (1919)
Since the Revolution, African-Americans have engaged in every American conflict. The Armistice that ended World War I was signed on November 11, 1918. Despite the bravery during the battle, African-American servicemen had endured discrimination and the war emerged as the animosity of a “racist society”. In twenty-six American cities, riots erupted in the anti-black race (Stevens, 2019). In 1918, there were 58 lynchings, with ten victims wearing uniforms. Later that year around seven seventy-seven blacks were lynched in 1919. The “Washington Race Riot” also happened in 1919.
References
Bright, W. S. (2008). Radicalism and Rebellion: Presidential Reconstruction in South Carolina, April 1865 to May 1866 (Doctoral dissertation, Clemson University). Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://search.proquest.com/openview/2769a23be446dd046dade343a09c1757/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750
Chido, D. E. (2021). Stabilization and Reconstruction End States. In US Army’s Effectiveness in Reconstruction According to the Guiding Principles of Stabilization (pp. 27-76). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-60005-1_3
Eriksson, K., & Ward, Z. (2019). The residential segregation of immigrants in the United States from 1850 to 1940. The Journal of Economic History, 79(4), 989-1026. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/residential-segregation-of-immigrants-in-the-united-states-from-1850-to-1940/56F74A4E950612CC0FDD1D756CB21841
Fox, J. W. (2004). Democratic Citizenship and Congressional Reconstruction: Defining and Implementing The Privileges and Immunities of Citizenship. Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review, 13, 455-486. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=653782
Hakim, J. (1994). Reconstruction and Reform. A History of the US. Book Seven. Oxford University Press, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED409245
Harris, G. L. A., & Lewis, E. L. (2019). Blacks in the Military and Beyond. Rowman & Littlefield. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=QvCjDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=1906+Brownville+Affray&ots=wA2X-cC1Hx&sig=ExktR1crElaYqNrGuGms4Nw9MlI
Harrison, R. (2007). New Representations of a ‘Misrepresented Bureau’: Reflections on Recent Scholarship on the Freedmen’s Bureau. American Nineteenth Century History, 8(2), 205-229. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14664650701387946
https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ugtheses/543/
Ingersoll, H. (2018). Jurisprudence Amid Legal Ambiguity in The Transition to Jim Crow: Black Women versus Railway Companies, 1865-1908 (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://ir.vanderbilt.edu/handle/1803/13355
Ingersoll, H. (2019). Legally a Lady. Contexts, 18(3), 20-25. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1536504219864954
Keele, L., Cubbison, W., & White, I. (2021). Suppressing Black votes: A historical case study of voting restrictions in Louisiana. American Political Science Review, 115(2), 694-700. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/suppressing-black-votes-a-historical-case-study-of-voting-restrictions-in-louisiana/662970B089BC99495ADC2F6E3CBF61FD
Keene, J. D. (2021). The United States and the First World War. Routledge. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780429345609/united-states-first-world-war-jennifer-keene
Klaybor, M. (2020). “The policy of intimidation had been so successfully managed that many colored men kept away from the polls”: Violence in the Reconstruction Era South. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from:
Klein, A., Persson, K. G., & Sharp, P. R. (2020). Populism and the First Wave of Globalization: Evidence from the 1892 US Presidential Election. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3661419
Lewis, A. (2018). Pseudo-scientific intellectual theories of the African child during the 20th century. Perspectives in Education, 36(2), 28-43. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.18820/2519593X/pie.v36i2.4
Losang, E., & Demhardt, I. J. (2018). Change of sovereignty and cartographic advance: cartographic implications of the Spanish-American war of 1898. In Dissemination of Cartographic Knowledge (pp. 99-128). Springer, Cham. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-61515-8_7
National archives. 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868). Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/14th-amendment#:~:text=No%20State%20shall%20make%20or,equal%20protection%20of%20the%20laws.
Peek, R. L. (1969). Military Reconstruction and the Growth of Anti-Negro Sentiment in Florida, 1867. The Florida Historical Quarterly, 47(4), 380-400. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30140242
Reece, J. (2021). Confronting the Legacy of” Separate but Equal”: Can the History of Race, Real Estate, and Discrimination Engage and Inform Contemporary Policy? RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 7(1), 110-133. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/783898/summary
Sartain, L. (2020). The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-630
Schearer, M. (2019). Bound by Oath: Andrew Johnson’s Veto of the Tenure of Office Act. Available at SSRN 3348786. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3348786
Schwartz, B. (1991). Mourning and the making of a sacred symbol: Durkheim and the Lincoln assassination. Social Forces, 70(2), 343-364. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/70/2/343/2232588
Stevens, R. L. (2019). African-American Soldiers Welcomed Home: Red Summer of 1919 Washington Race Riot. Social Studies Review, 58, 99-104. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://search.proquest.com/openview/84a878e7c5468b40f3f81731ae9aae42/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=48745
Swinney, E. (1962). Enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment, 1870-1877. The Journal of Southern History, 28(2), 202-218. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2205188
Valentin Jr, E. (2022). Scouting with the Buffalo Soldiers: Lieutenant Powhatan Clarke, Frederic Remington, and the Tenth US Cavalry in the Southwest by John P. Langellier. Journal of Southern History, 88(1), 178-179. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/847325/summary
Westphal, A. (2020). A Practical Implementation of Mitis Iudex in the Diocese of Des Moines. The Catholic University of America. Retrieved on 29th April 2022, from: https://search.proquest.com/openview/8e5d7f30489b6a38f132f008d9ed82b8/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=44156
