Reconstruction – Popular Politics in Early America

Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126

Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127

Fredrick Douglas has always been a character that I have admired for his intellectual ability but after the reading for today I am not so sure if I feel the exact same way about him. Max points out in his work the general hypocrisy of Douglass through “his strong support of the Republican party which often abandoned black and while attacking individualistic northerners who wished to forget was issues while preaching self reliance to African Americans.” (MARIEHEMANN). Now Douglass is a man who certainly built his own success out of the terrible lot life had given him. Douglass taught himself to read and write while working as a slave and would use these tool to aid the black community. I can understand why he would feel Reconstruction of the South would be unnecessary as he is an example of what someone can make out of themselves with little to no help. This of course leads me to one of my favorite debates I have had in a Davidson class, “what was the war fought over?” Douglass like most Americans believe that the war primarily was about slavery, I believe that the Civil War is falls somewhere in between the greatest game of chicken (regarding a group of people threatening something, in this case the South seceding) and a general over appreciation for someone’s role in a society (I believe the South thought that the North would be crippled without the raw goods and crops they provided). Now Douglass is not wrong thinking the war is about slavery, remember most people would see that as the biggest issue, but is certainly wrong to state as Henry put it “those who shape historical interpretations of the Civil War should be the ones to shape the fate of African-Americans in the post-war period.”

I get that Douglass was upset that this idea of Reconstruction was put into play right away, but what did he expect would happen? Was the South to suffer forever because they had an ideological difference that many considered “bad?” It is this that makes me question Douglass for his hypocrisy. Douglass is proof that there is more to meet the eye as his life challenges every claim that blacks were second class citizens due to their inferior intellectual nature. It is now his turn to let members of the South prove that they can function in a society that does not treat blacks poorly.

A point that many of my classmates have made a comment on his an idea AJ brings up in his blog regarding Douglass being less credible because he did not participate in the war as a soldier. To that comment I look towards a character like Ben Franklin. To my knowledge he was not a soldier in the American Revolution, yet some of his views and rhetoric on the revolution are the most popular writings from that time period. Douglass could have been held in the same light as Franklin but due to his simply “wrong” views regarding reconstruction and who should dictate the way we view the war to an extent wallows a state of irrelevancy because his work simply doesn’t appeal to the right audience.

In “For Something Beyond the Battlefield,” David W. Blight writes about Frederick Douglass’ efforts to preserve the memory of the ideological background of the Civil War. More specifically, Douglass wanted to make sure that the Civil War would be remembered in the American consciousness as a moral struggle between Northern abolition as an absolute good and Southern slavery as an absolute evil. Blight confirms Douglass’ perpetuation of that idea by quoting a speech in which Douglass urges Americans not to remember the Southern cause with any of the admiration afforded to the Northern one. (1160) A big part of Blight’s thesis has to do with the practical reasons for Douglass’ desire for this ideological narrative to persist—in other words, Douglass did not want to perpetuate these ideas simply because he believed them to be true. Blight posits that Douglass believed that those who shaped historical interpretations of the Civil War would be the ones to shape the fate of African-Americans in the post-war period. That is why, according to Blight, Douglass looked at the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1875 Civil Rights Acts as a result of Americans forgetting that the Civil War was at its core a war fought to free people of color from bondage. AJ’s post does a good job of further delving into the specific factors which, according to Blight, drove Douglass to take this view.

I definitely see the merits of Blight and Douglass’ view of the effect of what kind of history the nation generally accepts on its policies going forward. I think a good example of this idea in effect is in the reception of the 1915 film Birth of a Nation. It is one of the most well known films of all times, due in equal parts to both its innovations in filmmaking as an art and, unfortunately, its racist message. The story of Birth of a Nation takes an extremely biased look at Reconstruction in the South, indignantly claiming that white Southerners were stripped of their voting rights and made to live under governments made up entirely of unqualified, lazy African-Americans. In the film, the main character fights back against Reconstruction by establishing the Ku Klux Klan as a force for good that puts whites back in power (where the filmmaker would say they belong). Birth of a Nation was the highest grossing film of its time. Its popularity suggests that many Americans accepted the idea that Reconstruction was fundamentally unfair to whites and upset a power balance that it should not have. That is confirmed by the fact that by 1915 Southern Democrats had long before managed to stop Reconstruction and establish Jim Crow laws. Furthermore, many scholars believe that the film directly contributed to the 20th century revival of the KKK as an institution to harass African-Americans. Thus, we see that the film was a powerful enough influence on American collective consciousness to impact the future of race relations. In this way, Birth of a Nation’s reception and aftermath reflects Douglass’ and Blights’ argument.

Tag: Reconstruction

Douglass's Warped Views

An Example of Blight's and Douglass' Thinking