Ron Klayman: We moved to Memphis in 1979 and had spent all of our lives up to that point in the North.

 

This is my Uncle Ron Klayman, an affable retired TV executive.

 

Ron Klayman: I got to know one of my employees…and we became friendly, and one day we went to lunch... And at one point, he put his arm around my shoulder and in his East Tennessee accent, which I’m not sure that I can recreate, he said to me: “Ron, there’s two things you need to know about living in the south: fifty percent of the people who live here don’t believe we lost the war, and the other fifty percent say it’s not over yet.”

 

[Enter music]

 

I first heard this story in the fall of 2014. I was in the midst of a cross-country road trip and made a pitstop to visit Ron in Austin, Texas. I remember laughing the story off - the way you might shake your head when a parent talks about their 3-mile walk to school as a kid. The north won the civil war. Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox in 1865. Grade school stuff - one of my first history lessons. 

 

There was no debate. Right?

 

[sounds of a tailgate]

 

The week after my visit with Uncle Ron, I went to a football game at the University of Mississippi. I spent the day of the game wandering around The Grove, a massive, oak-lined park in the center of campus known as the tailgating Mecca of college football. 

 

It wasn’t your usual tailgating scene - There were tents the size of small homes filled with oil paintings, crystal chandeliers, and fancy rugs. There were leather couches and flatscreen TVs and spreads fit for a large wedding. I was welcomed with open arms - the outsider from the north. I was fed catfish and crawdads and lots of whiskey.

 

[exit tailgate sound and pause]

 

But, in a crowd of more than 100,000 people in a state that is nearly 40% Black, I saw more confederate flags than Black people. 

 

[enter music]

 

I saw a line of kids waiting to take a picture with a man dressed as Colonel Reb, a plantation owner who served as the school’s official mascot until 2003. I heard about how the school, whose sports teams are still known as the Rebels, recently changed its fight song to prevent the crowd from chanting: “The south will rise again.” 

 

I learned how the University shut down during the Civil War when all but four students joined the Confederate army -- and how it wasn’t until 1962 that the school admitted its first black student, James Meredith -- which launched a riot that killed two people and took hundreds of federal troops to suppress. There was a statue to James Meredith now, but I couldn’t help noticing that it paled in comparison to the 30-foot high monument to the Confederacy.

 

[exit music]

 

But it wasn’t just the symbols or the history that gave me pause; it was the way in which people described that history - how they talked about the war as if it was a recent event. When I mentioned I was from Massachusetts, people responded with stories of atrocities the Union army committed in their towns during the war. I had met many British people in my hometown; discussing the actions of soldiers during the Revolutionary War with them never crossed my mind. 

 

As I walked back to my car the night after the game, I found myself thinking back to Uncle Ron’s story and asking a question that I’ve continued to ask myself in the years since: is the civil war really over? 

 

[enter theme song]

 

I’m Nick Fogel, and this is Fireside History 1876, a podcast about the death of Reconstruction, the rise of the Jim Crow South, and the contested election of Rutherford Hayes.  

 

Episode 2 - The Long War

 

Close your eyes and imagine the end of the Civil War. If you’re a history buff, you’re probably picturing a parlor in the small town of Appomattox, Virginia. 

 

[Enter music - the Battle Hymn of the Republic]

 

It’s springtime, and the sun is shining. In the distance, there’s a bugle playing. 

 

Robert E. Lee, the Commander of the Confederate army, and Ulysses S. Grant, the Union army commander, arrive on horseback. They are old friends, fellow West Point graduates. They shake hands and agree to bury the hatchet that has torn apart the country. Outside, the soldiers lay down their arms and embrace each other as brothers. After four long, tragic years the war is over, and the country can begin to heal - ready at last to purge the scourge of slavery and embrace freedom. 

 

[exit music]

 

But here’s the thing: this story of Appomattox, the one you likely learned as a kid, is a myth.

 

Greg Downs: Even those Americans who have a pretty solid understanding of the Civil War… often have a mythic understanding of Appomattox, in which Lee and Grant meet as equals and as honored friends, and together establish a vision of a peaceful reconciliation.

 

That was Greg Downs, a Civil War and Reconstruction historian at UC Davis. 

 

A week before Lee's surrender, his forces abandoned the Confederate capital in Richmond, Virginia. They are now on the run, trying to unite with a large battalion of confederate soldiers in the Carolinas, in hopes that doing so might extend the war and push a reluctant north to give up the fight. 

 

[sound of marching, wagons, etc.]

 

But the race south has gone poorly. Expecting to find a train stocked with food a few days into their journey, Lee finds it full of guns instead.  

 

Robert Hodge: I mean these guys are in really bad shape. 

 

This is Robert Hodge, a Civil War reenactor who has retraced Lee’s retreat many times.

 

Robert Hodge: You know, where they're taking the horse feed and eating it... There's another Confederate named Barry Benson, he writes some amazing stuff. And he talks about at one point, you know, being so starved that he takes horse feces, and washes it to get the corn out, cleans the corn, and then eats it. 

 

But even with his army starving and badly outnumbered, Lee is prepared to “fight to the last.”

 

[enter music]

 

In the early morning hours of April 9th, Lee orders a massive attack at a weak point in the Union lines. The attack succeeds, but when the Confederate forces seize the high ground, they see thousands of Union troops laying in wait. The path forward is blocked. 

 

With the gravity of the situation setting in, Lee sees two options: fight one last Armageddon-style battle – one they will almost certainly lose – or surrender. But Lee’s officers push an alternative approach: order his men to scatter and wage a guerrilla war, terrorizing the Union forces with endless sneak-attacks that deflate the enemy and erode public support.

 

It’s the strategy that Lincoln and Grant fear the most, according to Presidential historian Michael Beschloss:

 

Michael Beschloss: Lincoln knew that it's always possible when you feel that you've won a war on the battlefield, that it may not be over, that people will be shooting at you from the hills, that if you're dealing with, let's say, a mayor of a southern town who has surrendered to the north, well, maybe he's surrendered, but there may be people in town who are not going along with him, and it will take a while to subdue that town and bring it under northern policies.

 

Grant concedes that winning a full scale guerrilla war without overwhelming resources is probably impossible. 

 

[exit music]

 

Jay Winik: If a guerrilla war had broken out….it's quite likely that it would look like some of these terrible civil wars that we see in the 20th and 21st century - that the United States would have come to resemble this terrible Swiss cheese where there would be pockets of, of quiet in some areas, perhaps in some of the cities, but then pockets of resistance in the hills and in the forest, and then the tangled woods that spread throughout all the south, it would have been a terrible, ghastly mess.

 

That’s Jay Winik, author of April 1865. He notes that the Civil War had its own example of guerrilla fighting in the state of Missouri, and it was a chilling reminder of its effectiveness and savagery. Lacking the number of forces required to fight a conventional war, Confederate soldiers turned to guerrilla tactics early in the war, terrorizing Union forces and northern sympathizers with a steady stream of violence. 

 

Jay Winik: It was not uncommon for rioters to be riding around with scalps, human scalps from their enemies that they had just cut off. Or limbs hanging from their horses. 

 

Lincoln knows that even if the north was able to prevail in a widespread guerrilla war, the task of bringing the country together after such brutality would be next to impossible. 

 

Michael Beschloss: Lincoln's temperament was to be conciliatory. This war had been fought to bring the union back together. And he felt that you couldn't bring the union back together, if you were treating the South completely with scorched earth, as if it was a conquered foreign territory. 

 

Desperate to avoid prolonged conflict, Lincoln presses Grant to offer Lee favorable terms of surrender: “Get the deluded men of the rebel armies disarmed and back to their homes… Let them once surrender and reach their homes and they won’t take up arms again.” 

 

[enter music]

 

For Lee a guerrilla war is surely tempting. If it works, he will be a hero - the George Washington of the new Confederate nation. And surrender means accepting defeat, disobeying Jefferson Davis, and risking his life. 

  

Here’s Winik again:

 

Jay Winik: Remember the calls for revenge and vengeance that were echoing in the hills even on that day. In fact, that morning, the Chicago Tribune had editorialized ‘hang Lee’ and that was something in fact that Lee and a number of his men were concerned potentially could happen.

 

But Lee also understands the steep costs of a prolonged guerrilla war. He tells his officers: “The men would be without rations and under no control of officers. They would have to plunder and rob to live... The country would be full of lawless bands in every part… and the enemy’s cavalry would overrun many sections they may never have occasion to visit.” Echoing Lincoln’s worst fears, he continues: “We would bring on a state of affairs from which it would take the country years to recover.”

 

[exit music]

 

Jay Winik: In the end, however, Robert E. Lee would say no to guerrilla war, and he would straighten himself up and he would say, I would rather die 1000 deaths than surrender to General Grant, but I must now go do that and do my duty.

 

[enter music]

 

Even in a state of disarray - starving and surrounded - many soldiers are resisting peace. They want to continue the fight. And for his part, Lee tells his men to go home but does little to quell their spirit of insurgency.

 

The next day, as he addresses his men for the final time, Lee doesn’t mention unity or the importance of peace. 

 

Robert E Lee: After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources….With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your Country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you an affectionate farewell. 

 

When Grant asks Lee to visit President Lincoln in DC to help promote peace, Lee declines. 

 

Over the next two months, the nearly 200,000 remaining Confederate troops will follow Lee’s lead and surrender. The hot war - the one with armies and big battlefields - is over. The guerrilla war that Lincoln feared has been avoided….for now. 

 

[exit music]

 

But while four years of bloodshed have preserved the Union and abolished slavery, much remains unknown. What will become of former Confederates? Will they be tried for treason? Will the southern states be allowed to rejoin the Union? 

 

And there are deeper, thornier questions: What will freedom look like for newly freed slaves? 

Who will decide? And who will protect that freedom?

 

[transition music]

 

Bobby Donaldson: I begin on the night of December 31, 1862. And I begin with a story that takes place in a small church on a Sea Island in South Carolina in an area called St. Helena’s Island.

 

This is Bobby Donaldson, a historian from the University of South Carolina, describing a group of enslaved people celebrating the arrival of their freedom.

 

Bobby Donaldson: They were aware that at the stroke of midnight, the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln would be put into place and they're having what is called a watch meeting service anticipating the new year…

    

And as the clock gets closer to midnight, an old woman began singing a song. And it was not a typical African American church song. It was a song that now had new meaning for those who were there. 

 

[enter music]

 

Bobby Donaldson: It was called my country Tis of Thee, sweet land of liberty of thee I sing, land where my fathers died. And the white missionaries who watched this are really moved by what they're hearing and what they're seeing. And what they're hearing or what they're seeing is that these African American people who are enslaved are taking an American anthem and making it their own.

 

For these people, who have been fighting for and imagining their freedom for years, Lee’s surrender is met with euphoria. 

 

[enter music]

 

Hilary Green: One of the most numerous feelings everyone has is jubilation because they see this as a religious proof that like the Israelites of the old Testament they are now no longer slaves…

 

Many formerly enslaved people walk off plantations where they have spent their entire lives. They cast aside the names of their former masters and seek out family members who have been sold. Ads in search of lost family members fill newspapers and bulletin boards.

 

[exit music]

 

Ad: Information wanted of John Wesley Dawsey, born in Low Maller, Maryland. Sold at 6 years from his parents, Nelson and Milla Dawsey. Any information concerning the above will be gladly received by Mrs. Milla Dawsey, 262 Lexington Street, East Boston, Massachusetts.

 

Historian Hilary Green explains that these ads help reveal the love and hope that has survived centuries of enslavement.

 

Hilary Green: And that, that love transcends the horrors of slavery. And now that they can act on it and actually find their family, they're putting the little money that they might have, that they are using instead of eating, instead of using for shelter, they're placing an ad and sometimes several ads to find family.

 

And as families unite and communities are established, visions of freedom come to the fore. 

 

Bobby Donaldson: So in Charleston, in South Carolina, there is a meeting of the freedmen convention…. So they write, we simply desire that we shall be recognized as men, that we have no obstructions placed in our way. The same laws which govern white men, shall direct colored men, that we have the right of trial by a jury of our peers. That schools be open and established for our children, that we be permitted to acquire homesteads for ourselves and children, and that we be dealt with as others in equity and justice. 

 

Freedom means access to land and education, allowing formerly enslaved people to subsist without relying on their old captors. 

 

Hilary Green: When you read the slave narratives and also the early interviews right after the war, hunger is huge… That is something that people are always concerned about. So there’s a part of freedom that I will never be hungry again, I will always have access to food and I will grow that food.

​

 

It’s the ability to appeal to a higher power when they’ve been wronged, the promise of a fair and just process. Here’s Greg Downs again:

 

Greg Downs: We see something articulated very quickly by freed people..., which is that freedom is also an ability to demand an end to specific forms of treatment that were embedded in slavery: whipping, separation of families, outright fraud. Freedom is a form of being embedded in the government where you can call in a counterweight, if you're oppressed by someone in power, a powerful local elite…Freedom is not a separation from government, it's access to government. 

 

And ultimately, freedom is being a part of determining what that government looks like - and that means voting.

 

Frederick Douglass emphasizes this point in a speech following the passage of the 13th amendment, which ended slavery: "Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot. While the Legislatures of the South retain the right to pass laws making any discrimination between black and white, slavery still lives there."

 

[enter music]

 

What’s striking is that after 250 years of slavery, instead of rejecting the government that legalized their enslavement, most Black people seek to embrace it. They take on names like Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. They organize mass meetings and call for the expansion of democracy. For them, freedom is not a chance for retribution but an opportunity for participation. 

 

[exit music]

 

But for white southerners, the Civil War was also a war of freedom, their attempt to assert their right to live as they wish. They too, compare themselves to the Israelites being delivered from Egypt, freed from the shackles of an oppressive north.

 

Greg Downs: So one of the terrible ironies sometimes seen as a contradiction in American life is that the civil war is fought between sides, each claiming to be defending freedom.

 

The white south’s vision of freedom is rooted in property. You’re not free if the government can take your possessions - and what more valuable possession is there than a slave? It’s a vision of freedom that demands local control and sees a large federal government as an intrusive and oppressive force.

 

News of Lee’s surrender is met with profound sadness across much of the white south. Their homeland has been destroyed, their fields torn apart, their cities laid to waste. As Union soldiers liberate plantations, the former slave owners watch in stunned silence. 

 

Still, there are some early signs of acceptance. 

 

[enter music]

 

In a church sermon in Richmond shortly after Appomattox, a black man breaks tradition and walks to the front of the line to receive communion. After a few moments of confusion and stunned silence, the aging general Robert E. Lee walks up and kneels beside him. Following Lee’s lead, the rest of the congregation soon joins.

 

[exit music]

 

But these moments of unity are rare. Far more common are the fights that erupt from simple gestures – a Black person refusing to give up the way on the street or daring to travel without a pass or demanding to be called Mr. or Mrs. For white southerners, resisting these everyday gestures is part of a broader effort to deny the changing social order - to make clear that freedom does not mean equality.

 

As Greg Downs says, they're trying to build as thin a notion of emancipation as possible. 

 

Greg Downs: White Southerners …. in the winter of 1865 will write out contracts when they're forced to, but their contracts will literally say explicitly, that the freed people have to work in exactly the same manner as they did as slaves and to defer to their owners in exactly the same way they did as slaves. 

 

The task of brokering a lasting peace between these two very different visions falls on the north. The only way to enforce emancipation and deter future rebellions is for the federal army to maintain control of the South.  

 

Greg Downs: And Grant well knew that even if they stopped openly fighting, they would do every single thing they could to prevent the emancipation of slaves, including something that hit home for even the most conservative US military commanders, which is they all knew that Southern judges would throw every US soldier in jail that they could and charge them with kidnapping for aiding escaped slaves. Why did they know this? Because that’s in fact what judges were doing in Kentucky, a loyal but pro-slavery state until the military declared martial law over and limited their ability to do so.

 

So Grant declares martial law - he says that there is no legitimate government in the South, and he orders his army to fan out across the region.

 

Greg Downs: And Grant In fact, doesn't even go to the much ballyhooed laying down of arms ceremony because it doesn't matter. He's back in Washington DC planning for the war that will continue after Appomattox. 

 

With federal troops in place across the south, all eyes turn to Washington.

 

[enter music]

 

Though it may seem obvious that the north would ally with the Black south, this is far from a certainty. Lincoln’s own positions on slavery and Reconstruction have wavered. In August 1862, in a widely read letter, Lincoln wrote: 

 

Abraham Lincoln: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it… What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.” 

 

[exit music]

 

Historians will argue that Lincoln’s public stances may reflect shrewd political posturing rather than his true intent. Indeed, Lincoln is playing a delicate balancing act. He is trying to cajole the white south to rejoin the Union, while also maintaining support from northerners seeking revenge. The hit Hollywood movie Lincoln makes this case in a particularly memorable scene. Here’s Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln:

 

Abraham Lincoln: A compass, I learnt when I was surveying, it'll point you True North from where you are standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp, what's the use of knowing True North?

 

In January 1865, Lincoln presses for the passage of the 13th amendment to abolish slavery, delaying peace talks in the process. He also supports the issuance of Field Order 15 - a measure that offers formerly enslaved people 40 acres and a mule - with most of the land coming from property seized from former slave owners. 

 

[enter music and crowd noise]

 

On the evening of April 11th, 1865, two days after Lee’s surrender, a crowd gathers outside the White House, calling on President Lincoln to speak. For the first time, a somber Lincoln expresses public support for limited Black suffrage. “It is unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.” 

 

In the crowd, a young actor and Confederate activist is so incensed by these words that he vows to make it “the last speech Lincoln will make.” 

 

[transition music]

 

Three nights later, the actor sneaks into the Presidential box at Ford’s Theater and fatally fires a single shot into the back of Lincoln’s head. A few blocks away, another man makes his way into the home of Secretary of State William Seward and stabs him multiple times. And across town, another would-be assassin with orders to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson loses his nerve in a hotel bar.

 

The plot is designed to take out the entire executive branch, creating enough chaos to allow the Confederacy to stage a comeback. But Seward and Johnson survive. Instead of reigniting the war, the attack throws Reconstruction into confusion. Lincoln, the man who fought to hold the country together, who freed the enslaved people and served as their champion, is dead.

 

[exit music]

 

Michael Beschloss: It need not be said that Abraham Lincoln was the kind of political leader you find maybe once in a century or more. That is what brought him to power in 1860. That's what allowed him to lead the north and the union through the Civil War, and to win, not only militarily, but philosophically. So you have to assume that that same brilliant mind with all those political skills, that would have been the one dealing with all of the obvious problems of reconstruction after Appomattox.

 

In his place, an obscure figure from East Tennessee, the vice-president, steps in, a man who has met with Lincoln just once since their inauguration. 

 

Michael Beschloss: Well this is a minor figure whom Lincoln had brought on to the ticket in 1864, for very crass political reasons. And it's one place where there was an enormous lapse in Lincoln's judgment, because of all human beings, Lincoln knew how quickly someone can die and change everything….And so for Lincoln to basically roll the dice and gamble on the probability that he would live for five more years, and Andrew Johnson would never become president. That was reckless.

 

Johnson is a former slave owner and a democrat - Lincoln is a Republican. But he was also the only southern congressman to remain loyal to the Union, and he’s an avowed enemy of the so-called planter class. He symbolizes the idea of unity - north and south, democrat and republican, which for a war-weary country, is appealing.

 

But Johnson is a man with many flaws. He swears too much, drinks too much, and picks too many fights. On the morning of Inauguration Day, after tossing back a few whiskeys, he lectured a group of Supreme Court justices about their fancy clothes and then slobbered on the bible during his oath. Powerful forces in Congress briefly pushed for his resignation, and though he remained in office, his standing in Washington is badly bruised. 

 

[enter music]

 

Johnson inherits a country that is damaged but full of opportunity. The white south is divided - the planter class is weak and discredited. The north is entering a post-war economic boom, and four years of war have pushed the cause of justice to the forefront of the national conversation. 

 

One can imagine a bold leader providing newly freed enslaved people with land, education, and political power, while also weakening the forces of extremism and breaking up the land monopoly of the old slave owners.

 

[exit music]

 

But Johnson is not that leader.   

 

Hilary Green: So one thing about Johnson, he does not like African-Americans. 

 

Hilary Green again:

 

Hilary Green: He’s definitely someone who is deeply racist. He's deeply resentful of black freedom. 

 

At Lincoln’s second inaugural, Johnson scowled at the idea of shaking hands with Frederick Douglass. Douglass left the meeting reporting: “Whatever he is, he is no friend of black people.” Shortly after taking office, Johnson writes: “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men.”

 

[enter music]

 

And so Johnson, at this critical hour, falters. With Congress not due to return to session until December, he spends the pivotal spring and summer pulling back on the promise of a true Reconstruction and inviting the planter class back to power.

 

Madeleine Ramsey: He believes very much that the South should be in charge of reconstruction.  

 

Madeleine Ramsey, a historian at Virginia Military Institute: 

 

Madeleine Ramsey: He believed that Southern States could be trusted to manage themselves and did not need federal oversight from the government. And so that colors his entire presidential reconstruction. He doesn't believe in a large federal government that, as he would consider it meddling, in state's affairs.

 

He rescinds the Field Order providing formerly enslaved people land. 

 

Hilary Green: And not only do they kick these individuals off the land, the federal government will purposely use black troops to do it. Because they knew these former enslaved people would not fire or defend against other black soldiers. 

 

He grants amnesty and gives full rights of citizenship to all but a handful of Confederate leaders and wealthy slave owners. He then allows these people to seek pardons from him personally.

 

[exit music]

 

Madeleine Ramsey: So fall winter of 1865 to 1866 Johnson's office and Johnson himself are just pardoning these former Confederates by the dozens, by the hundreds. And so everyone begins to realize really about six or seven months after the war is over that Johnson is not going to hold these southerners, these ex-Confederates' feet to the fire.

 

[enter music]

 

The damage of these pardons is immediate. The planter class, which had spent the late stages of the war worrying that they might be tried for treason, returns to power with a vengeance. They rip Black families off their land and enact Black Codes to reinstate slavery in all but name. They prevent Black people from buying or selling property, carrying arms, or attending school. They elect former Confederates to office. And by the winter of 1865, society has largely returned to its prewar form.

 

On Christmas Eve, 1865, a handful of Confederate veterans meet in the small town of Pulaski, TN. In the dim light of an office building, they lay out plans for a new society dedicated to the preservation of white supremacy. Within a few years, the group, which calls itself the Ku Klux Klan, will boast tens of thousands of members and will be known by another name: “the invisible empire of the south.”

 

[exit music]

 

[Sound of university protests]

 

In the summer of 2020, shortly after George Floyd’s death, students and faculty at the University of Mississippi renewed their efforts to remove the Confederate statue from campus - the same one I’d passed on my trip six years earlier. In an effort to demonstrate the racism it represents, professor Anne Twitty tracked down a speech given at its dedication ceremony. Delivered in 1906 by Charles Scott - a candidate for Governor who liked to don full Confederate battle garb for his public events - the speech laid bare the realities of the Long War.

 

Anne Twitty: Charles Scott takes pains to point out that the most noble, most honorable thing that Confederate soldiers did was not to participate in the Confederate Army and to defend the Confederacy on the battlefields, but was instead to return to their homes after the war, and to defend essentially white supremacy, to try to ensure that that the promise of of reconstruction for black Mississippians for black southerners as a whole was not brought to fruition.

 

According to Twitty, the monument was not a tribute to the south’s bravery in the Civil War, but to its victory in the so-called Long War... when former Confederates fought to ensure that defeat on the battlefield would not mean the end of white supremacy. 

 

Anne Twitty: Scott did not want to reflect on what had been lost, but what had been won. And any Black person in Mississippi who walked in the shadow of that monument would know that Scott was right. 

 

[transition to theme song music]

 

Next time on Fireside History.

 

Hilary Green: And so you see this battle and showdown between Johnson, who does not want to see the extension of black rights.... And then you have other people like: “no, we need to deal with the 4 million slave people. They are now citizens. They were more loyal than the people who fought in the Confederacy.”

 

As Johnson and the white south look to usher in a new era of white supremacy, Congress and the Black south fight back. 

 

Hilary Green: Across the nation, not just the South. There are 15th amendment ratification parades. These are black men…. And many of them are in their former uniforms and to denote their new status as men, as full citizens of the nation.

 

Reconstruction begins in earnest but in the shadows, the power of the Klan is growing. Can the progress last? 

Fireside History is produced by me, Nick Fogel. It is edited by Iris Adler. Scoring and sound engineering by Jason Albert and Hannah Barg. Voice acting from Kilo Martin and Sara Young. Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions and The Plantation Singers. Audio from Ford’s Theatre and Rancho Mirage Writers Festival. Special thanks to Ron Klayman, Greg Downs, Robert Hodge, Michael Beschloss, Bobby Donaldson, Hilary Green, Madeleine Forrest Ramsey, and Anne Twitty.