In the past few years, the period in American history known as Reconstruction has become increasingly prominent in the public consciousness. The dominant academic narrative is now mainstream: ...

Don’t skip the chapter after the Civil War. But the notion that Reconstruction was a terrible mistake, a rape of the South by the unscrupulous and the vengeful that could only be redressed by letting ...

Born enslaved in northern Virginia in the 1820s, Henry Tibbs first lost his mother when their enslaver sold her to notorious Alexandria slave trader Joseph Bruin. Tibbs was just a small child when ...

Paul G. Summers, a lawyer, is a former appellate and senior judge, district attorney general, and the attorney general of Tennessee. Editor's note: This is a regular feature on issues related to the ...

Historians generally treat Reconstruction as an era whose aspiration, drama and importance are confined to America alone. And little wonder: In the decade after the Civil War, the U.S. embarked on a ...

The Civil War produced two competing narratives, each an attempt to make sense of a conflict that had eradicated the pestilence of slavery. Black Americans who believed in multiracial democracy ...

Editor’s Note: This article is part of “On Reconstruction,” a project about America’s most radical experiment. In his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, while reflecting on the ...

Most histories of the Civil War era portray the struggle over slavery as a conflict that exclusively pitted North against South, free labor against slave labor, and black against white. In Freedom's ...

"Forever Free project : Stephen B. Brier, Peter O. Almond, executive editors/producers ; Christine Doudna, editor." This new examination of the years of Emancipation and Reconstruction during and ...