HIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877 – Details, episodes & analysis
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HIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877
Open Yale Courses - David Blight
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Frequency: 1 episode/0d. Total Eps: 27
Professor David Blight. Open Yale Courses. The causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War, from the 1840s to 1877. License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
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Lecture 27 - Legacies of the Civil War
vendredi 25 août 2017 • Duration
Professor Blight finishes his lecture series with a discussion of the legacies of the Civil War. Since the nineteenth century, Blight suggests, there have been three predominant strains of Civil War memory, which Blight defines as reconciliationist, white supremacist, and emancipationist. The war has retained a political currency throughout the years, and the ability to control the memory of the Civil War has been, and continues to be, hotly contested.
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Lecture 26 - Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory
vendredi 25 août 2017 • Duration
Having dealt with the role of violence and the Supreme Court in bringing about the end of Reconstruction in his last lecture, Professor Blight now turns to the role of national electoral politics, focusing in particular on the off-year Congressional election of 1874 and the Presidential election of 1876. 1874 saw the return of the Democrats to majority status in the Senate and the House of Representatives, as voters sick of corruption and hurt by the Panic of 1873 fled the Republicans in droves. According to many historians, the contested election of 1876, and the "Compromise of 1877," which followed it, marked the official end of Reconstruction. After an election tainted by fraud and violence, Republicans and Democrats brokered a deal by which Republican Rutherford B. Hayes took the White House in exchange for restoration of "home rule" for the South.
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Lecture 17 - Homefronts and Battlefronts: "Hard War" and the Social Impact of the Civil War
mardi 22 août 2017 • Duration
Professor Blight begins his lecture with a description of the sea change in Civil War scholarship heralded by the Social History revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with a focus on the experience of the common solider, women, and African Americans, a central component of this shift in scholarly emphasis was an increased interest in the effects of the war on the Union and Confederate home fronts. After suggesting some of the ways in which individual Americans experienced the war, Professor Blight moves to a discussion of the war's effect on industry and economics, North and South. The lecture concludes with a description of the increased activism of the federal government during the war, an activism that found expression in finance, agriculture, taxation, building railroads, and, most importantly, in emancipation.
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Lecture 16 - Days of Jubilee: The Meanings of Emancipation and Total War
mardi 22 août 2017 • Duration
This lecture focuses on the process of emancipation after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The Proclamation, Professor Blight suggests, had four immediate effects: it made the Union army an army of emancipation; it encouraged slaves to strike against slavery; it committed the US to a policy of emancipation in the eyes of Europe; and it allowed African Americans to enlist in the Union Army. In the end, ten percent of Union soldiers would be African American. A number of factors, Professor Blight suggests, combined to influence the timing of emancipation in particular areas of the South, including geography, the nature of the slave society, and the proximity of the Union army.
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Lecture 15 - Lincoln, Leadership, and Race: Emancipation as Policy
mardi 22 août 2017 • Duration
Professor Blight follows Robert E. Lee's army north into Maryland during the summer of 1862, an invasion that culminated in the Battle of Antietam, fought in September of 1862. In the wake of Antietam, Abraham Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, a document that changed the meaning of the war forever. Professor Blight suggests some of the ways in which Americans have attempted to come to grips with the enigmatic Lincoln, and argues that, in the end, it may be Lincoln's capacity for change that was his most important characteristic. The lecture concludes with the story of John Washington, a Virginia slave whose concerted action suggests the central role American slaves played in securing their own freedom.
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Lecture 14 - Never Call Retreat: Military and Political Turning Points in 1863
mardi 22 août 2017 • Duration
Professor Blight lectures on the military history of the early part of the war. Beginning with events in the West, Blight describes the Union victories at Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, introduces Union General Ulysses S. Grant, and narrates the horrific battle of Shiloh, fought in April of 1862. Moving back East, the lecture describes the Union General George McClellan's abortive 1862 Peninsula campaign, which introduced the world to Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. The lecture concludes with Confederate General Robert E. Lee's decision to take the battle to the North.
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Lecture 13 - Terrible Swift Sword: The Period of Confederate Ascendency, 1861-1862
samedi 19 août 2017 • Duration
Professor Blight discusses the expectations, advantages, and disadvantages with which North and South entered the Civil War. Both sides, he argues, expected and desired a short, contained conflict. The northern advantages enumerated in this lecture include industrial capability, governmental stability, and a strong navy. Confederate advantages included geography and the ability to fight a defensive war. Professor Blight concludes the lecture with the Battle of Bull Run, the first major engagement of the war.
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Lecture 12 - "And the War Came," 1861: The Sumter Crisis, Comparative Strategies
samedi 19 août 2017 • Duration
After finishing with his survey of the manner in which historians have explained the coming of the Civil War, Professor Blight focuses on Fort Sumter. After months of political maneuvering, the Civil War began when Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, in the harbor outside Charleston, SC. The declaration of hostilities prompted four more states--Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arkansas--to secede. Professor Blight closes the lecture with a brief discussion of some of the forces that motivated Americans--North and South--to go to war.
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Lecture 11 - Slavery and State Rights, Economies and Ways of Life: What Caused the Civil War?
samedi 19 août 2017 • Duration
Professor Blight begins this lecture with an attempt to answer the question "why did the South secede in 1861?" Blight offers five possible answers to this question: preservation of slavery, "the fear thesis," southern nationalism, the "agrarian thesis," and the "honor thesis." After laying out the roots of secession, Blight focuses on the historical profession, suggesting some of the ways in which historians have attempted to explain the coming of the Civil War. Blight begins with James Ford Rhodes, a highly influential amateur historian in the late nineteenth century, and then introduces Charles and Mary Beard, whose economic interpretations of the Civil War had their heyday in the 1920s and 1930s.
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Lecture 10 - The Election of 1860 and the Secession Crisis
samedi 19 août 2017 • Duration
This lecture picks off where the previous one left off, with a discussion of the legacies of John Brown. The most important thing about John Brown's raid, Professor Blight argues, was not the event itself, but the way Americans engaged with it after the fact. Next, Professor Blight discusses the election of 1860, a four-way battle won by the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln. In the wake of Lincoln's election, the seven states of the deep South, led by South Carolina, seceded. The lecture closes with an analysis of some of the rationales underlying southern secession.
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