“Reconstruction asked whether emancipation would remain the absence of slavery-or become the presence of citizenship, education, political power and equal protection.” WHAT WOULD FREEDOM MEAN? The war ended slavery and preserved the Union, but left […]
FREEDOM CLAIMED, FREEDOM PROCLAIMED, FREEDOM MADE CONSTITUTIONA Emancipation was not a single gift bestowed from above. It was freedom claimed by enslaved people, adopted as war policy, defended by Black soldiers, and secured in the […]
UNION, FREEDOM AND THE NATION REMADE “The Revolution created the nation. The Civil War tested whether that nation deserved to endure.” The secession crisis asked whether the United States was a permanent nation or a […]
COMPROMISE FAILS AND THE UNION COMES APART “The Union did not collapse because Americans stopped compromising. It collapsed because compromise could no longer reconcile freedom with human bondage.” THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 he territory acquired […]
THE WEALTH OF A NATION AND THE PRICE PAID IN HUMAN LIVES “Enslaved people were not outside America’s economic rise. Their stolen labor stood near its center.” KING COTTON During the first half of the […]
“Expansion made America larger. Division tested whether it could remain one nation. Reunion asked whether unity could be rebuilt upon freedom.” America’s continental expansion opened land, markets and possibility while carrying conquest, Indigenous dispossession, Mexican […]
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