May 26, 2025 • 61 mins
The Reconstruction Era Blog's Patrick Young joined Bo and Joey for a discussion about the political and social fallout after the American Civil War.
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Want to support the show? Visit buymeacoffee.com/homebrewhistory and become a monthly subscriber to access bonus episodes and exclusive member's only livestreams!
Remember, Home Brew History is brought to you by #civilwartrails! Learn more here: https://www.civilwartrails.org/
Home Brew History is partnered with the Bearded Historian, Jeff Williams. Check out his designs here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheBeardedHistorian
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Whole crew, that whole crew, talking about whole crew, everybody,
the total crew.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
The history pod past, going back to the past when
the little less past.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Get might give you a gas?
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Are you by getting inspired?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
But you'll never get tired.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Of whole crew, that whole brew.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Top Scholars of show with Joey and Boo, that whole crew.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Hole crew.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Yeah, and just like that, it's like we it's like
we do this every week or something something like that.
Speaker 6 (01:12):
Well some of us, some of us, just some of
us forget to upload the calendar and get it right,
so one of us has to do the show by himself.
That's what I've learned today.
Speaker 7 (01:25):
That's right, That's right.
Speaker 6 (01:26):
I'm really bad at keeping up with things. Gosh, I'm
still sorry about that. And then I ghosted you while
you were trying to figure out what was going on.
Speaker 8 (01:37):
I'm busy of work it out. I'm sorry.
Speaker 7 (01:39):
Sorry, all right, Well, it's good to be, uh, you know,
back here. Because Friday of this past week, April eleventh,
I had to go visit seemingly an old colleague of yours,
Preston Bavona. That dentest Thursday evening, I was eating dinner,
(02:06):
you know, as a normal person typically does in the
evening time, and I felt something and I was like,
that doesn't feel right. And one of my mohlers was
just like, we're just not gonna work anymore.
Speaker 8 (02:19):
Good bye.
Speaker 7 (02:20):
Yeah. So I went and paid him a visit and.
Speaker 8 (02:24):
He did tell me.
Speaker 7 (02:25):
He's like, you know, as far as dental emergencies go,
this isn't a bad one. He said, your tooth is healthy.
It just kind of fell apart on you. So it
took me thirty years, but I got my first dental filling.
Shout out to the good doctor over there. Shout out
to him, because well I can eat again normally, thank god.
But this is much better than any dental surgery that
(02:48):
you have to have. So you know, as far as
you know, as far as not putting stuff on the
Google calendar, that's that's all the low wrung of issues
that I've added over the past couple of days.
Speaker 6 (02:59):
I think we're I'm glad to hear that, because I mean,
talking to me has been compared to getting a root
canal before. So this is good.
Speaker 8 (03:09):
This is good.
Speaker 6 (03:09):
Well, it's not just the two of us tonight.
Speaker 8 (03:11):
We have a special guest.
Speaker 6 (03:14):
The author an administrator of the Reconstruction Era blog online.
I got a chance to sit down and really listen
to Patrick Young speak at last year's Emerging Civil Wars imposium,
and I don't know, I guess other words to say
(03:34):
other than I thought it was just really magnificent. And
I'm not trying to butter him up because he's waiting
on the side of the stage.
Speaker 8 (03:40):
Here.
Speaker 6 (03:41):
I think going to a civil war conference and not
talking about battles of leaders, but talking about political reconstruction.
Speaker 8 (03:50):
And the post war.
Speaker 6 (03:52):
Kind of dilemmas that we face as a nation, that
first it's bold, right, but second it's it's really really
really needed. Because bo, we've talked about this before. Somebody goes, oh,
I'm really into the Civil War, Like, oh yeah, what
do you find most interesting?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (04:08):
Well, I know that the Springfield rifle it weighs like
nine pounds, Like okay, okay, all right, you know I
know what size shoe Roberty and Lee wore. Okay, yeah,
can you tell me anything else? And there's nothing else there, right,
And people don't even have the beginning of understanding of
reconstruction and they get it it's hard to understand, but
(04:29):
to help us clarify some of the points we're gonna
talk about tonight, you know, specifically black codes and the
rise of the Kukos Klan. Who better to talk about
it than Patrick Young. So get Patrick on here and
we'll we'll roll there.
Speaker 8 (04:46):
He is.
Speaker 9 (04:49):
Welcome, pat Hey, coming to you from Long Island, New York.
Speaker 6 (04:53):
Okay, that's some long ways away for.
Speaker 7 (04:56):
Us now, we just need the Long Island iced team.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
So Patrick, how did you before we jump into this,
how did you find your kind of niche in reconstruction history.
Speaker 9 (05:10):
Well, you know, like a lot of people of my age,
I was very drawn to the Civil War as a youth.
I always most people my age say they got really
involved during the one hundredth anniversary, the centennial of the
Civil War, because I look back and most of them
would have been four years old at that time. So
(05:30):
I think what happened is that it generated a lot
of interest in the Civil War history, and a lot
of people started reading about it as children. And that's
what I did, and then really didn't look into it
much after I turned about thirty years old. I'm a lawyer.
I teach immigration law at Hofstra Law School on Long Island.
(05:53):
I'm also for many years I am also a registered
lobbyist in New York State and I have represented thousands
of immigrants, so that took up most of my time.
But then in twenty ten, with the anniversary the Sisqui
Centennial of the Civil War coming up, I started to
(06:16):
do some research into immigration history during the Civil War.
And I thought I would do maybe four articles for
a local news source that reached out to immigrants about
their history, et cetera. And instead I wrote two hundred
and fifty articles on this, and I had over two
(06:36):
hundred and fifty thousand unique views by unique individuals over
those years, so it became quite large. Of course, you know,
by the end of the centennial, I was trying to
turn this into immigrants during reconstruction, and I wrote a
number of articles that were fairly popular. You know. I
(07:01):
also began to look at it and saying, really, immigrants
are something you want to put on the side. This
really is about black citizens who were not recognized.
Speaker 8 (07:13):
As citizens before eighteen sixty.
Speaker 9 (07:16):
Five, and that really needs to be a group that
I wanted to focus on. Now. I spent many years
investigating human rights in Central America, in Peru and in Africa,
and so I tried to use some of that experience
to look at what went on in human rights in
(07:39):
America in the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies. And you know,
as I began to read more and more, did research
into newspapers, read diaries, etc. I became very involved in it.
I think I've only been doing this for ten years,
which is probably more than about ninety five percent of Americans.
(07:59):
War didn't to be into the reconstruction here. In fact,
in nineteen or I should say in twenty thirteen, when
I started doing this, it only read six books on reconstruction,
which I'm told is more than most people have. But
since then, I've read about two hundred and fifty books
on reconstruction and still reading almost every day.
Speaker 7 (08:23):
That's a good happen to get into. And I think Patrick,
you bring a very unique experience to you know, this
water scope of history here, because reconstruction is incredibly important,
you know, and it's something that is clearly misunderstood by
many Americans. You know, I mean even some young historians
you know, sort of misinterpret things, you know, as it
(08:45):
pertains to this post war era of reconstruction. So you know,
that's kind of what we're here to do is to
kind of clear up some of those things I've ran it.
We you know, reconstruction happens, you know, over the course
of several years, you know, and so obviously we're not
going to be able to knock down everything every problem
in a hour long podcast episode, you know. So, Patrick,
(09:05):
one thing that we do kind of want to talk
about too, because especially in the post war era, we
see the rise of and how you've described the Clan
as America's oldest terrorist organization. So how exactly, you know,
do you know, look into the Klan and how does
that affect reconstruction going forward?
Speaker 8 (09:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (09:25):
Sure, I mean there are a number of ways. One is,
there are several modern treatments of the Klan. Just in
the last year, we've had Fergus Bartowich right about the
Clan War, which is the Ulysses s. Grant essentially making
war on the Klan in South Carolina in eighteen seventy one.
(09:48):
In eighteen seventy two, Elayne Parsons did a book Ku
Klux because at the time, although it was called the
Ku Klux Klan, they typically refer to themselves as Kluxers
or Ku Klux and that's an overall history of the Klan,
but also it focuses on the types of medium messages
(10:12):
that the Klan was trying to send out. You know,
right now we have social media et cetera, et cetera,
and the Klan was using social media of the eighteen sixties.
You know, they did not have tons of money. So
if they're dressing up in gowns, if they're writing at night,
if they have secret oaths and secret words in which
(10:38):
to spread their fear, they're really creating social media presence.
In the eighteen sixties, people would often say, oh, we're
not sure if they were the ku Klux. We know
that they were Confederate ghosts, because the ku Klux would
say that we're not living men who you could prosecute.
(10:58):
We are people who who were ghosts who were killed
by the Yankees, and we're coming back to revenge ourselves
on blacks and on and on white Republicans who were
seen as traders.
Speaker 6 (11:13):
And we've just passed the one hundred and sixtieth anniversary
of Appomatics, and you know, in a few weeks time,
by the time this episode comes out, we'll have passed
the anniversary of Johnson surrender in Carolina.
Speaker 9 (11:27):
So this is.
Speaker 6 (11:28):
Appropriate time, right to be wrapping up the war and
putting aside all the one hundred and sixtieth events and
starting the one hundred and sixtieth anniversary cycle of reconstruction,
which I understand doesn't have a massive, big following, and
there's not going to be any you know, one hundred
and sixtieth anniversary conferences or anything like that. Right, But
(11:50):
as we kind of jump into the post war years, right,
the war comes to an end by December of eighteen
sixty five, we'll see the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment
abolishing slavery. At the same time, in states like Louisiana
and Tennessee, places where reconstruction had really kind of already
been in effect effectively since eighteen sixty two sixty three,
(12:12):
we start to see a return of a loyalist government.
We start to, i mean, think about Mississippi, a place
rife in secession, rife in the Confederate movement, probably more
so postwar than wartime.
Speaker 8 (12:27):
But what the man who.
Speaker 6 (12:31):
Fills Jefferson Davis's seat is a black man in highm revels.
We're seeing all these things happening in reconstruction, and that
pretty much brings about an automatic resistance, doesn't it, because
it's it's I think I heard you say last year
at the Emergen Civil War Conference was that you know
this progress, you can have progress, but you'll always have resistance,
(12:53):
and sometimes it's violent resistance.
Speaker 8 (12:55):
So what is that?
Speaker 6 (12:56):
You know, we're kind of alluded to it there with
the clusters, but what does it need us to.
Speaker 9 (13:02):
Well, you know, it's interesting because General Gordon, who is
one of Lee's most trusted generals, told the crowd of
mixed race people in Georgia, he said, for blacks, we
opposed your freedom because we had bought you. And here
(13:24):
in the years after the Civil War ended, people still
thought of themselves as having been tremendously deprived by the
freedom of black people. And in fact, I was looking
at one state's recap of its losses, and it was
hundreds of millions of dollars. But when you looked at
(13:44):
it broke broken down. Almost all of it was people
were free.
Speaker 7 (13:49):
You know.
Speaker 9 (13:50):
It wasn't that banks had been burned, or that produce
was stolen, et cetera. It was the main asset of
most white people was their slaves. And so what you
have is an almost immediate revulsion against this. So you know,
let's just take a quick look back at how we
(14:12):
discover that. You know, we look at the reconstruction. Everybody
always as well, it starts right after the surrendered. But
you know, as you've said, with New Orleans, right around
the same time that the surrendered, it was celebrating the
first anniversary of its first black public school. So there
(14:33):
were reconstruction efforts in many, many areas of the South,
really beginning in eighteen sixty two when Ben Butler welcomes contrabands,
which is a term we should never use. These were
refugees who were escaping slavery, and he welcomed them into
his lines at Fortress Monroe in Virginia. From then on
(14:57):
you do see Lincoln his generals abolitionists, particularly women in
the North, who want to do something more than make
war on the Confederates. They want to reconstruct the South
so that blacks can have some type of equal rights
and some guiding say in the future of the country. Now,
(15:23):
President Johnson sends Grant down south to report on what
the condition of the South is, and he actually gives
a fairly lukewarm report on it, but he also sends
Carl Schurz, who was a German immigrant. He had been
a young person who had participated in the eighteen forty
(15:44):
eight revolution in Germany, had to flee, came to the
United States and became one of the largest political voices
in the United States. And he goes down to South
Carolina and then he goes throughout the Gulf States to
report on what he's seeing.
Speaker 8 (16:04):
And what he.
Speaker 9 (16:05):
Says is that there is a system of terrorism. This
was in July of eighteen sixty five, so this isn't
something that happens much later. This is something that southern
white people were already starting to come to terms with.
What he reports is is that if you're a black
(16:26):
person and you're trying to organize, you will be shot down.
If you're a courier for the army and you're taking
orders from one position to another, you'll be shot down.
If you're a white Republican. And let's remember that, yes,
there were five hundred thousand to a million Southerners in
the Confederate Army, but there were one hundred thousand Southerners
(16:49):
who were in the Union Army. Those were white Southerners.
There were another one hundred thousand blacks in.
Speaker 8 (16:54):
The Union Army.
Speaker 9 (16:56):
So when we're looking at this, these are very divided communities.
It's not as though everybody in these communities was anti
reconstruction or anti United States, because blacks made up a
third of the people in the South, and there was
a sizable proportion, about ten percent of the white population
(17:18):
that was loyal to the United States. But they were
immediately attacked. And it's interesting because Sure's talks to Peter
osta House, who is another German refuge and was in
the United States Army. He was a general, and he
said that the state of affairs would essentially put all
(17:42):
Union men in danger as soon as the United States
withdraws federal troops from the South. And we often think of, well,
they're going to withdraw the federal troops in eighteen seventy
seven after Rutherford B. Hayes's election or maybe non election,
(18:02):
depending on how you view it, But that's not really
what happened.
Speaker 8 (18:06):
You know.
Speaker 9 (18:07):
What we see in the South is a very very
quick reduction in the military. I don't know if you've
heard this in Louisiana, but a lot of people will
talk to you about their stories from their great grandparents
about what it was like during reconstruction. You were stopped
on the street by the United States Army, they told
(18:30):
you what to do, they put you in jail, et cetera.
And let's remember that the United States Army had between
one point five million to two million people during the
Civil War. Except the problem you have is is that
by eighteen sixty six there's only sixty one thousand Union
(18:50):
troops in the South. You know, people forget about this
because they always remember the Grand Review in Washington, and
you know, it's funny, you say, Okay, what did they
do with those men after they had the Grand Review?
Did they go back down? Said no, they went home,
you know. And it wasn't just people coming to Washington.
(19:12):
There were many states that also organized these types of
grand reviews in that capital in Albany, they did it
for New York State troops. And so what you find
is you went from having one point five million people
in the South in June of eighteen sixty five down
(19:32):
to sixty one thousand. By March of eighteen sixty six,
there's only forty one thousand troops remaining, and by September
there was seventeen thousand Now, when I say these numbers
were talking about ten Confederate states, there were more in
Texas because they were there primarily.
Speaker 8 (19:53):
To observe.
Speaker 9 (19:55):
Maximilian the Emperor, who was put in by France. They
were not really doing that much in terms of protecting blacks.
But you know, for the ten states you basically had
by eighteen sixty seven, the only about two thousand in
each state.
Speaker 7 (20:16):
Which is yeah, now, I mean it's just it's and
this is how I explained to my students, especially when
you're talking about the reconstruction era, is that there's never
enough manpower, there's never enough you know, money that goes
to actually reconstructing the South. And I think part of
that Andrew Johnson is sort of to blame there, you know.
(20:37):
And Johnson definitely doesn't help. Even though Johnson's one of
those individuals that can't stand sort of the you know,
top three percent of Southern you know, slate owners, you know,
but he is he is, in you know, by his
very nature, a Southerner, you know, so he does have
some Southern sympathies, you know, and so he's not definitely
he's definitely not helping the situation at all.
Speaker 9 (21:00):
Well, now, it's going to say that he's doing more
than not helping. One of the first things he does
after the war ends is sell off all the cavalry horses.
And so what you'll often find is there may only
be two thousand Union troops in a particular state, and
they're all infantry. So you can imagine there are nighttime
(21:25):
raids by night riders who initially not the Klan, they
were local organizations, but then by eighteen sixty eight they're
the Klan. They're mounted, they know where everybody is, they
know all the secret passages to get away from the army,
and the army is chasing them on foot.
Speaker 5 (21:46):
Yeah, And the thing I was going to bring in
up to is the way you described how there's such
a quick downturn and downsize of the army and then
but people still today will say like, oh, well, you know.
Speaker 6 (22:00):
I remember doing my great grandpappy told me. I told
my grandpappy, who told my dad, who told me. It
sounds a lot like the well, you know, my great
great grandpappy he rode with forest, and it's like at
this point he is like an army of three million
by the count of So it makes me wonder. Then
(22:24):
when people talk about reconstruction, they say, well, you know
this happened. I know because it happened to my family.
How many of it is just an instant that's been
extrapolated from the historical record. It sounds good, so it
becomes the family legend, family war, and you get stuck
with it. But one thing, and Bow and I talked
about this in our kind of pre production was one
(22:47):
of the great myths, and I came across it a
lot when I was working in public history. I think
it's something that's just become kind of embedded in people's
kind of understanding of the post.
Speaker 8 (22:59):
War construction your South.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
They'll say things like, well, you know, the clan didn't
start out violent, It only got violent. It was it
was a social club, you know, So how does that right?
Social club? Social club for you know, beating and abusing
and harassing a free black population, right.
Speaker 8 (23:18):
That's their main activity? Guys?
Speaker 9 (23:19):
I mean, come on, yeah, yeah, I mean I think
when we take a look at the history of the Klan,
the Clan, the later Klan actually said it was started
in Pulaski, Tennessee, which is true. On Christmas Day eighteen
sixty five. I'm like, didn't they have kids? How could
(23:39):
they get together for a meeting on Christmas Day? But
actually it seems like it started in June of eighteen
sixty six. At the very beginning, it did have some
mystical notions about it, and people who look at like
grand cyclops and wizards and and so forth. They did
(24:01):
that on purpose, because they wanted to create a supernatural appearance.
You know, as I said earlier, they wanted blacks to
think that they were Confederate soldiers who had been resurrected
from the dead. Let's also remember who these people were.
You know, there's a common view of the clan that
(24:24):
they were ne'er do wells, people who really weren't very
well educated. But at least in the initial clan, most
of them were professionals. Most of them had the equivalent
of a high school degree. Some of them had gone
to college. Some were in professions like lawyers. I'm a lawyer,
so I have to take some responsibility for that. So
(24:47):
they had put this together. Were they initially violent? No, no,
it doesn't mean they weren't planning to be violent, But
at least in eighteen sixty six, there were no reports
of them carrying out attacks. They would appear locally again
in costume. Now they did not appear with the white hoods.
(25:10):
They did not appear in white robes. That was created
by Dixon, which later created that view in Birth of
a Nation by D. W.
Speaker 8 (25:21):
Griffith.
Speaker 9 (25:23):
But they did wear very very odd clothing. They could
be of all different colors. Red was particularly useful for
them because it had that image of blood, and they
would go around so that blacks in the neighborhood Republicans
in the neighborhood wouldn't know that they existed. But again,
(25:43):
they were not killing anyone, they were not beating anyone.
It's really in eighteen sixty seven that the clan begins
to take its wrath out again on blacks and on Republicans.
The Republicans were not all from the North, as I
say there. You know, these were people that Confederate loyalists
(26:04):
would call scallawags. They were native to the South, but
they wanted to stay part of the United States during
the war, and they wanted to make sure that they
were reunited with the Northern States and not be a
separate area. So you know, they were getting harassed, they
(26:26):
were getting attacked, and in eighteen sixty eight. In January,
there are reports in national newspapers of the clan killing people. So,
you know, we don't exactly know how many people were
killed in eighteen sixty seven, although they were involved in violence.
But a year and a half after they were first
(26:48):
drawn up, they are engaged in deadly violence against their opponents.
By that time, they're not just appearing in Pulaski or
in its neighboring communities, because in eighteen sixty seven they
were primarily in those areas. They were beginning to appear
all over the all over the South.
Speaker 7 (27:09):
So Patrick, why don't we, you know, we talk about
how the clan starts off as you know, the sort
of seemingly non violent organization, and then we see an
uptick you know, as years go on, and everyone typically
will point to, you know, the Civil Rights Act of
nineteen sixty four, but forget about the Civil Rights Act
of eighteen sixty six, which you know, arguably that's for
(27:30):
the very first time Congress has to pass this piece
of legislation that identifies that identify as formally free black
slaves as citizens. So do we see an uptick in
violence after we see the National Congress pass something like this.
Speaker 9 (27:48):
You know, I would just say that the violence had
already been upticking. The Civil Rights Act of eighteen sixty
six was passed in reaction to widespread violence against particularly
against black people. You know, if we look, we have
(28:08):
the Memphis Riot in the spring of eighteen sixty six.
Over the summer of eighteen sixty six, you see the
New Orleans riot, you know, which is now called the
New Orleans massacre. The Memphis riot, forty people were killed,
all but one of them were black. In the New
Orleans riot, a mob descends on black marchers and kills
(28:34):
and again it's very difficult to figure out how many
people are killed, but between fifty and two hundred people. So,
you know, up until that time in eighteen sixty six,
a lot of Northern Republicans were not radicals. Many of
them had come on board because they wanted the Union reunited,
(28:56):
and they felt that Southerners, after their armies were it
would for their own good want to be reintegrated into
the Union. And most of them were not thinking of
blacks becoming voters. Now, Lincoln had already said that I
shouldn't say he said, but his Attorney General Bates had
(29:17):
said that blacks were citizens of the United States even
without the Fourteenth Amendment or the eighteen sixty six Civil
Rights Act, So at least within the Republican Party, they
did believe that blacks were citizens. But they wanted to
do something that would set down that blacks were citizens
(29:37):
so that the United States could protect them, because if
they're not US citizens, what's the United States federal government
doing protecting them from the legitimate authority of states.
Speaker 6 (29:49):
That brings on to another question I have, is you
kind of mentioned that at first it's not like a
national thing, regional thing. It's very much in local, state
by state. So we see, you know, if Tennessee is
the first in December or June of eighteen sixty six
with the the clan, we see Louisiana too has its
(30:13):
own with the you know, white leaguers and the Knights
and yeah, and Wade Hampton and his Red Shirts in
South Carolina, and like there's these little movements and all
of them, you know, I'm going back to my roots
with Tennessee. You know, all of them are spurred on
by a little instance, right, one thing that leads to
(30:35):
to this kind of outbreak. And in Tennessee. It's it's
Parson Brownlow right, it's it's the reconstruction governor of the
state who would replaced Andrew Johnson. And really it he's
kind of the spark and everything else kind of follows
right after that. But I'm thinking back to, you know,
(30:56):
time spent in Franklin, and you know, there's a there's
a riot takes place there in the summer of eighteen
sixty six or sixty seven, and it's only I think
it's sixty six. Yeah, and there's only you know, a
month or two goes by, and Franklin has its own
den of the Klan. It just pops up in reaction
to what.
Speaker 8 (31:13):
Had just happened.
Speaker 9 (31:16):
I doubt that it was in reaction. I think they
looked at that as a marketing opportunity. You know, the
Klan by eighteen sixty seven eighteen sixty eight had become
more sophisticated in reaching out to areas where they saw
trouble brewing.
Speaker 7 (31:34):
You know.
Speaker 9 (31:34):
So, for instance, as we said with Karl Schurtz, which
was in eighteen sixty five, if blacks were moving from
where they lived to another place, the white people in
the place they were leaving would then attack them so
that they wouldn't move. They wanted the blacks to stay
there and to be essentially workers for them. What you
(31:58):
would see in those situations as the clan would come
in and say, we will work with you white people
to maintain solidarity and rule by white people. In fact,
they put out their constitution in Mississippi which said we
must be governed by only white people. And they wanted
to make that pretty clear because if people might be
(32:23):
attacking local black people who are trying to assert their
rights by moving, you want them to have an ideology
that would be part of a much broader national ideology.
And as we could see when the clan has revived
in the twentieth century, they're able to actually use that
(32:44):
ideology to win many recruits in northern States. You know,
Indiana had the fastest growth of the clan. In the
nineteen twenties. I live on Long Island. One in seven
white Protestant men Long Island joined mc clan. Now, there
were no real clan claverns outside of the South during reconstruction.
(33:08):
There were some clan activities outside of the South, but
they didn't have a very large number. But by the
nineteen twenties, many of the clan, and again this is
a reconstructed clan, were in the North because the ideology worked.
Speaker 7 (33:27):
Yeah, and that's you know, I do like that you
brought up, you know, especially in the post war era
that you know a lot of because because there is
a sort of mis you know, conception there that every
Republican is a radical Republican and their radicalism has nothing
to do with hanging ten in help in Hawaii. It's
(33:49):
just simply the notion of giving African Americans, you know,
a sick rights of citizenship. So I guess Patrick, in
your opinion, how how exactly does the Clan affect the
South's reconstruction and kind of going on to that, are
we still living in the shadow of Southern reconstruction?
Speaker 9 (34:12):
Well, you know when we talk about reconstruction and basically
what happened with the Klan and its successor organizations, because
by eighteen seventy seven, the Klan is almost dead as
an organization, although many of its members go on to
these groups like the White League or to the Red Shirts,
which was in South Carolina, in North Carolina. But let's
(34:34):
take a quick look here, you know, we look at Alabama.
There were Republicans in control of the state from eighteen
sixty eight until eighteen seventy two, not eighteen seventy two,
but eighteen seventy four. After they're deposed in eighteen seventy four,
(34:55):
the Democrats, which by the eighteen seventies had become allied
with Klan and with these different white organizations, held the
governorship until nineteen eighty three. So they basically had a
reach that wasn't just for reconstruction or Jim Crow, but
reached much much further than that. We could look at Arkansas.
(35:17):
The Republicans held it from eighteen sixty eight to eighteen
seventy four. The next Republican who was elected after they
were deposed in eighteen seventy four was Mike Huckabee in
nineteen ninety six. You know, so we're and I could
go through all ten states. But you know, particularly for
(35:39):
my age, we used to call it the Solid South.
They weren't solid just because people loved the Democratic Party.
It was that those whose interests might be served by
the Republicans in nineteen ten nineteen twenty were very very
much suppressed. They were primarily black.
Speaker 6 (36:02):
And Ye, what I think we'll do here in just
a second is we'll take do a quick break for commercials, right,
and then we'll jump back in and I kind of
want to talk a little bit about the Black Codes
as well, so we'll be right back with some more
Homebrew history in just a second. Mber History is brought
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Speaker 8 (37:24):
To join us, then.
Speaker 6 (37:26):
Check out our designs by the Bearded historian Jeff Williams.
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(37:47):
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(38:07):
do a series twice a week, but be sure to
stay up to date and turn those downloads on. I
think what we'll do now is we'll head into a
commercial break that I don't do, so you don't have
to look at me. I don't have to look at you,
and you don't have to hear me pretty good, I
(39:22):
don't mean it less awkward. Yeah, you're not just standing
there while I talk.
Speaker 7 (39:26):
We're just like okay, all right, well I need the
hold time.
Speaker 6 (39:31):
You want to come back now?
Speaker 7 (39:34):
So Patrick, before before we left off with Joey's wonderful
face and in all those commercials there, we kind of
wanted to get back on the show and kind of
talk about the black codes. So can you kind of
tell our listeners what exactly are the black codes?
Speaker 9 (39:54):
When when I talk about Reconstruction, a lot of people
will say, well, you know, white people in the South
were very much oppressed by governments that were put in
by black votes. And you know, and I actually believed
that when I was a kid, because I had heard
that too. You know, up here in New York in
(40:16):
the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, you probably got a
similar view that somebody would have gotten in the South.
Maybe a different view on the Civil War, but Reconstruction
was pretty much the same that, you know, Southern whites
were oppressed by the blacks and that they black people
had misruled their states and that's why the Black Codes
(40:39):
were passed. The problem is when I looked into it,
most of the Black codes were passed in eighteen sixty five.
So after the Civil War, you know, most of the
people who were able to vote, actually all of the
people who were able to vote in the eleven Southern
states were white, and the only people who could hold
office were white because Andrew Johnson did not follow through
(41:04):
by allowing blacks to be recognized as citizens and to vote,
which meant that these new legislatures, which had been elected
by the white people, many of whom were Confederates, would
put in laws that you would think would deal with
what starving refugees or disabled veterans or rebuilding railroads, etc.
(41:31):
But that's not what they did. The first thing they
did was put in the Black Codes. And in fact,
you will find by a fall of eighteen sixty five,
almost every legislature is at least considering a Black code.
And it's interesting because for the first time really in
Southern history, blacks got together and tried to oppose these
(41:54):
Black codes. And you know, if we look at it,
in Charleston, there was a meeting of state delegations from
different ame churches and they said, we do not understand
why we are being punished since we haven't done anything.
(42:15):
We don't understand. Now, if you look at these codes,
we can take a look at Mississippi. Under Mississippi's code,
you couldn't vote. Okay, we all knew that you couldn't
hold property. If you were found to be wandering in
a neighborhood. In other words, you were going to another
town to get a job or to find your relatives,
(42:37):
because many people had been separated from their children or
from their parents, you would be arrested, okay. If you
were arrested, very often for similar charges, a white person
would be fined, whereas a black person would be whipped.
They didn't do whippings on white people. The other thing
(43:00):
is they would also attach a fine to you, so
you get whipped, and then you have to pay two
or three hundred dollars, which would be three thousand to
six thousand dollars. If you couldn't pay that, you would
be sold on the courthouse steps. Now they weren't selling
you for life, but they would sell you to farmers
(43:23):
and industrialists, and you would have to work for them
until you had paid your debt. And of course who's
making those figures. Those are white people who are making figures.
And so what we see with these laws, we're seeing
both an attempt to control black people an attempt to
get revenge. And it's interesting because a lot of Southern
(43:46):
whites did not say because they had fought for the union,
but just because they had been happy that they had
been freed, we need to take revenge on them. And
the other thing is they want to make sure that
black people don't get the notion that they are going
to be citizens and that the government owes anything to them,
which is I had said when we're looking at the
(44:08):
South Carolina church people, they did say we're citizens.
Speaker 8 (44:16):
That becomes one of the.
Speaker 6 (44:18):
I think the most fascinating pieces, maybe the most unsettling
pieces of reconstruction. And BO you feel free to chime in.
That is when you know you're talking to a group
about what happens to know, at a historic site where
slavery existing, you're talking about the enslaved population, and then
you say, you know, on comes eighteen sixty five and
there's this belief in freedom, and you know you can
(44:42):
use the great W. E. B. Du Boys quote, which is,
you know, for a moment the slave stood free in
the sun and then turned back to slavery, and it's
it's slavery by other means. We can use all those
different expressions, but inevitably you get somebody that'll say, like, well,
you know, at least you know they were free, you know,
(45:03):
they had a roof over their head. And I was like,
at least.
Speaker 8 (45:05):
They were free.
Speaker 6 (45:06):
Yes, but that doesn't mean that the treatment or that
the oppression by the systematic oppression was any any any
less of a travesty than it was under the previous regime.
I don't know both, if you have anything to add
to that, yes, And.
Speaker 7 (45:22):
That's something very difficult for historical sites, you know, all
across the US South that did experience, you know, slavery,
you know, you know, prior to you know, the outbreak
of the American Civil War. And because there is a
fundamental misunderstanding of reconstruction, sometimes guess this is the first
time that they hear this information. And as we've already learned,
(45:44):
it's something I stress to my students that I teach
us that look, anytime the status quo is shaken, you
know there's going to be pushback of some kind. And again,
sometimes it can be violent. So some people even you know,
just in a basic conversation, you know anything that even
in the you know, Reconstruction era, you know, black people
(46:05):
earn their freedom, you know, but that doesn't mean that
all of a sudden, you know, the South is you know,
happy lucky that they're that they're free, and treat them
as equals. It's going to take you know, another one
hundred years, you know, of fighting for for civil rights,
for fighting for the basics of citizenship, to have the
security to vote in the in the first place, you know.
(46:27):
So you're absolutely right, Joey, is that this is you know,
a complex, complicated subject that sometimes people just don't under
they don't have the experience.
Speaker 6 (46:38):
Now, Patrick and Bow, I'm going to put the question
up in the bar here, and I just want to
get your reaction to it, okay, And I'm I'm sorry
we're sitting here talking.
Speaker 8 (46:57):
I just.
Speaker 6 (46:59):
I I just I have to ask.
Speaker 7 (47:03):
The thing is that you know, Joey and I both
have worked you know, in academia and in public history,
and sometimes people of the public, because of their lack
of understanding, are willing to ask these very outlandish questions.
So I'm kind of cure. It's here.
Speaker 6 (47:18):
So the question for listeners, right, does our shortcoming and
understanding reconstruction come from a misunderstanding of slavery and above
all race? Throw that one to the panel.
Speaker 7 (47:33):
That's a great question. I mean, clearly there's there's a
misunderstanding somewhere. But I also think too, you know, some
of this stuff and like Patrick kind of mentioned, you
know when when you know, at a very young age,
you know, we were sort of willing to accept, you know,
sort of these fabricated you know, facts about reconstruction, about
(47:55):
the American Civil War that because I mean when I
was a wee young land you know, I may have believed,
you know, in this idea that the South was just
fighting for states rights, you know, that didn't have anything
to do you know with African chatnel slavery at all,
you know, And I you know, I thank god, you know,
I've I've I've been called lunded demand uh since then
(48:19):
and have rectified you know, some of these issues.
Speaker 6 (48:22):
Is that that are your your woke milk toast milks.
Speaker 7 (48:28):
I've been called a lot of names, and you know what,
I've come to realize that I'm whatever you think I am.
I suppose I don't know.
Speaker 8 (48:35):
I'm curious what you think.
Speaker 9 (48:38):
Well, I think people don't understand slavery at all. You know, first,
I'm here in New York, and I'm sorry, we have
a call to begin. I'm here in New York, and
right next to where I am, I'm living on Long Island.
But in Brooklyn they had the same percentage of slaves
(48:58):
in Brooklyn Virginia. So in other words, it was not
a few people who had moved here from the South
who held personal slaves. These were people who were farming fields.
They were doing very similar work to what was being
done in Virginia. And yet we look at Brooklyn at
that time as being in a revolutionary state, not in
(49:22):
a slave state. In nineteen and eighteen twenty, of course,
New York does abolish slavery, although it takes some time
before the last people are free. So I think that
one of the things that we don't understand is is
that slavery. I won't say it was universal, but it
existed in most parts of the United States. And so
(49:44):
when we look at our ideology around slavery and ideology
around race, we're not just looking at something that was
imported from the South, that many parts of the North
had also developed this ideology because they all also had
excuses for why they maintained themselves on the labor of
(50:06):
black people. So I think that's important. The other thing,
of course, that most people will say. I think that
probably when I was young, people when I was young,
a lot of people would say, well, slavery wasn't all
that bad. And I don't think you'll meet anybody under
forty who says that. You know, they would see it
as very bad. But you know, for those of us
who were old, I'm about to be seventy, But what
(50:31):
I would say is is where you know, a lot
of us have a little bit of well, they had
a job to go to, they got fed, et cetera.
Their children would sold off. So it's a weird thing that,
you know, we would kill someone who took our children
and sold them off, or taking my parents and selling
them off. And yet we expect people were who are
(50:55):
black to just accept that. In the eighteen fifties and
eighteen sixties.
Speaker 6 (51:00):
Convinced that a lot of that though, comes from like
the it's a problem with memory and it's a problem
with understanding.
Speaker 8 (51:07):
I'm convinced that.
Speaker 6 (51:09):
That has its roots in the kind of Southern romantic
vision of slavery where it's you know, the benevolent slave
or the benevolent master, and the and the faithful slave,
and it's well, you know, the only reason they were
ever bad slaves was it was a bad master, and
so all slaves must have been good, So slavery must.
Speaker 8 (51:26):
Have been good.
Speaker 6 (51:27):
It's easy to run down that that rabbitle. Now, well,
I know we've done what we always do on this show,
which is where we start talking about something that's really,
really incredible, and we could spend all night doing it,
but inevitably we have to wrap the episode up. So
I want to throw it to Patrick for like last
(51:50):
few brief words and then let's jump into Boo Hicky.
All right, Patrick, anything else you want to add something
that I just want to.
Speaker 8 (51:58):
I'm sorry, I do.
Speaker 9 (51:59):
Just want to say a little bit about how we
remember reconstruction.
Speaker 8 (52:04):
There was always.
Speaker 9 (52:07):
After eighteen seventy seven or rewriting of the history of
reconstruction in the South, but really it got its main
propulsion forward to being a general understanding in the early
nineteen hundreds when William Dunning, who was from New Jersey
and taught at Columbia Law School, began to devote himself
(52:28):
to defending Southern whites treatment of blacks. Now, it's interesting
because he trained a whole group of historians, almost all
of whom were from the South, but he himself was
from New Jersey. He was one of the primary influences
for the writing of The Clansmen, which then became Birth
(52:49):
of a Nation, and that really led to the reconstruction
of the clan in the nineteen twenties. It became very,
very popular. Nineteen thirty, Margaret Mitchell in her book Gone
with the Wind, is defending the Klan, although Scarlett O'Haras
said the people who were in the clan were idiots.
(53:10):
But you know, there was a reconstruction of clan images
both in the North and in the South.
Speaker 8 (53:20):
And I think that's.
Speaker 9 (53:20):
Something we have to keep in mind that if you
went to college, if you studied history, you know this
stuff is bullshit. But if you didn't, a lot of
people may understand that there was some gentleness between master
and slave that was interrupted by the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
(53:41):
fifteenth Amendment.
Speaker 7 (53:44):
Yeah, you're absolutely right, and it doesn't help. And you
also have you know, President Woodrow Wilson airing you know,
Birth of a Nation at the White House, and he's
famously quoted in saying it's like writing history with lightning.
Speaker 8 (53:59):
Do we call them friend of the show? Woodrow Wilson
friend of the show?
Speaker 3 (54:04):
You know?
Speaker 7 (54:04):
When when I die and and inevitably go to Hell,
I'm gonna find Woodrow Wilson and set him up with
an eight round boxing match. He's He's first and the
second person is the in the inventor of coleslaw, keep
your wet nanny's cabbage away from me? Uh Hitler?
Speaker 6 (54:22):
Yeah right, strange, strange, but whatever. I'll take it.
Speaker 8 (54:30):
One more thing.
Speaker 9 (54:31):
My favorite beer is Beamish.
Speaker 7 (54:34):
Okay, all right, not a bad thing? Uh Patrick? What what?
Speaker 8 (54:39):
What boo Hicky?
Speaker 7 (54:40):
History is is something that you kind of polluted to?
Speaker 3 (54:43):
Uh?
Speaker 7 (54:44):
Is that any historian who can see a historical fact
and call out the bullshit where it is, it's effectively
my substitute for the word. Uh what? What exactly about
reconstruction or the black codes that people either just get
wrong completely, something that is misinterpreted some that you want
to dispel a myth about reconstruction?
Speaker 9 (55:03):
Now, well, I think that for many Americans, they look
at the impact of reconstruction on white Southerners, and I
think that the main thing to do, because reconstruction was
not like the Marshall Plan where we're restoring industrialization to
Europe after the Nazi Holocaust. This was really a reconstruction
(55:28):
so that we had a multi racial society, which was
not agreed to, at least by Southern whites and by
many people in the North. But I think what's interesting
is that if you don't look at it simply from
the lens of the white folks, but look at it
from the lens of the black folks who had been
suffering under slavery for three hundred years. Now we're free,
(55:51):
and what their hopes were and what they used that
time to be able to do. They developed the black churches,
they developed black schools. Most of the school teachers teaching
blacks in the South were not white people coming from
the North. They were native born black Southerners, Okay, And
we need to look at that, and we need to
(56:12):
look at their political organizations, their social organizations to see
what they were capable of. And while they lost the
political battle, many of those institutions survived for one hundred
years and actually recreated the first civil rights movement in
the second civil rights movement of the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 6 (56:37):
Incredible stuff. And it's always hard to do the little
shift from a good boo hicky like that to what's
in your cop?
Speaker 1 (56:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (56:47):
Now, I'm I'm going to be polite and I'm going
to go straight to Patrick and ask what's in your cup?
So this is segment we've had on the show since
its inception, is where you know, we talked about what
we're drinking, right because we've all sat around, we've had
ourselves a nice little poor You already mentioned your favorite
beer is Beamish, So let's let's go what what's in
your cup?
Speaker 9 (57:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (57:07):
Beamish?
Speaker 9 (57:08):
I wish I was drinking it right now when I
was over in Ireland. I love that. I would say
it's nothing important.
Speaker 8 (57:15):
I'm reading.
Speaker 9 (57:16):
I'm having a mixed berry seltzer from Wegmans. I don't
know if you even know what Wegmans is. It's supermarket
up in Rochester and Buffalo, but it's starting to spread
all over the country.
Speaker 6 (57:30):
One of these days, Bill, how about yourself?
Speaker 7 (57:32):
Yeah, I have some Tennessee whiskey cider. I have have
been on that. I'm I'm glad that I don't have
one of those addictive personalities, because I would, first of all,
not be on this show. I would just be a
drunk somewhere, living in a box under the bridge somewhere,
or in a van down by the river, as the
(57:52):
late great mister Farley put it. But no, it's good stuff.
A Tennessee whiskey cider is absolutely delight joey about yourself.
And then you said I was gonna hate you, So
what's uh what you got?
Speaker 8 (58:07):
Let's new?
Speaker 6 (58:07):
All right, I'm drinking a lemon gen sing in ginger
green tea.
Speaker 7 (58:15):
Are you sure you heard that?
Speaker 8 (58:17):
About to be seventy?
Speaker 6 (58:19):
It's the show is called home brew. It doesn't say
necessarily that it has to be an intoxicating liquor.
Speaker 7 (58:30):
Okay, it's a good point. I guess that's why I'm here.
Speaker 6 (58:33):
I suppose show is intentionally vague. All are welcome, you know,
to quote the gathering hymn at your local Catholic church,
All welcome here? Oh man, Well Patrick, I am just
(58:53):
I gotta be honest. I've so enjoyed uh this discussion
and really really just had a good time. People, of course,
are listeners and viewers. They can find more from you
on You've got Reconstruction Era the blog. You've also got
a Facebook presence, right, yes, yeah, So we'll put links
(59:14):
to both of you just.
Speaker 9 (59:15):
Here, Patrick Young, and I'll accept you.
Speaker 7 (59:19):
Joey, You're welcome, That's true. Joey actually sent me a
link to your blog and I had the opportunity this
afternoon to kind of read over a couple of articles
that you wrote there. Absolutely fantastic. So anybody that wants
to know more about Patrick, you know, that's where you
can find them, and of course on Facebook with Patrick.
This was a topic of discussion that we can expand
(59:42):
on for hours. But we want to thank you first
of all for coming on the show and helping us
out with a little bit of reconstructing reconstruction history.
Speaker 8 (59:51):
Thank you.
Speaker 6 (59:51):
Until next time, Everybody, cheers, cheers, everybody.
Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
Whole crew, that whole crew, talking about whole crew and reminding.
Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
The total brew a history pod past, going back to
the past when the littlest.
Speaker 7 (01:00:26):
Past it might leave you a gas.
Speaker 4 (01:00:30):
Are you biting inspired?
Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
But you'll never get tired.
Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
Of whole crew. That whole crew.
Speaker 4 (01:00:42):
Top scholars on the show with Joey and Boo that
whole crew, whole crew,
Whole crew, that whole crew, talking about whole crew, everybody,
the total crew.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
The history pod past, going back to the past when
the little less past.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Get might give you a gas?
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Are you by getting inspired?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
But you'll never get tired.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Of whole crew, that whole brew.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Top Scholars of show with Joey and Boo, that whole crew.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Hole crew.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Yeah, and just like that, it's like we it's like
we do this every week or something something like that.
Speaker 6 (01:12):
Well some of us, some of us, just some of
us forget to upload the calendar and get it right,
so one of us has to do the show by himself.
That's what I've learned today.
Speaker 7 (01:25):
That's right, That's right.
Speaker 6 (01:26):
I'm really bad at keeping up with things. Gosh, I'm
still sorry about that. And then I ghosted you while
you were trying to figure out what was going on.
Speaker 8 (01:37):
I'm busy of work it out. I'm sorry.
Speaker 7 (01:39):
Sorry, all right, Well, it's good to be, uh, you know,
back here. Because Friday of this past week, April eleventh,
I had to go visit seemingly an old colleague of yours,
Preston Bavona. That dentest Thursday evening, I was eating dinner,
(02:06):
you know, as a normal person typically does in the
evening time, and I felt something and I was like,
that doesn't feel right. And one of my mohlers was
just like, we're just not gonna work anymore.
Speaker 8 (02:19):
Good bye.
Speaker 7 (02:20):
Yeah. So I went and paid him a visit and.
Speaker 8 (02:24):
He did tell me.
Speaker 7 (02:25):
He's like, you know, as far as dental emergencies go,
this isn't a bad one. He said, your tooth is healthy.
It just kind of fell apart on you. So it
took me thirty years, but I got my first dental filling.
Shout out to the good doctor over there. Shout out
to him, because well I can eat again normally, thank god.
But this is much better than any dental surgery that
(02:48):
you have to have. So you know, as far as
you know, as far as not putting stuff on the
Google calendar, that's that's all the low wrung of issues
that I've added over the past couple of days.
Speaker 6 (02:59):
I think we're I'm glad to hear that, because I mean,
talking to me has been compared to getting a root
canal before. So this is good.
Speaker 8 (03:09):
This is good.
Speaker 6 (03:09):
Well, it's not just the two of us tonight.
Speaker 8 (03:11):
We have a special guest.
Speaker 6 (03:14):
The author an administrator of the Reconstruction Era blog online.
I got a chance to sit down and really listen
to Patrick Young speak at last year's Emerging Civil Wars imposium,
and I don't know, I guess other words to say
(03:34):
other than I thought it was just really magnificent. And
I'm not trying to butter him up because he's waiting
on the side of the stage.
Speaker 8 (03:40):
Here.
Speaker 6 (03:41):
I think going to a civil war conference and not
talking about battles of leaders, but talking about political reconstruction.
Speaker 8 (03:50):
And the post war.
Speaker 6 (03:52):
Kind of dilemmas that we face as a nation, that
first it's bold, right, but second it's it's really really
really needed. Because bo, we've talked about this before. Somebody goes, oh,
I'm really into the Civil War, Like, oh yeah, what
do you find most interesting?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Oh?
Speaker 6 (04:08):
Well, I know that the Springfield rifle it weighs like
nine pounds, Like okay, okay, all right, you know I
know what size shoe Roberty and Lee wore. Okay, yeah,
can you tell me anything else? And there's nothing else there, right,
And people don't even have the beginning of understanding of
reconstruction and they get it it's hard to understand, but
(04:29):
to help us clarify some of the points we're gonna
talk about tonight, you know, specifically black codes and the
rise of the Kukos Klan. Who better to talk about
it than Patrick Young. So get Patrick on here and
we'll we'll roll there.
Speaker 8 (04:46):
He is.
Speaker 9 (04:49):
Welcome, pat Hey, coming to you from Long Island, New York.
Speaker 6 (04:53):
Okay, that's some long ways away for.
Speaker 7 (04:56):
Us now, we just need the Long Island iced team.
Speaker 6 (05:01):
So Patrick, how did you before we jump into this,
how did you find your kind of niche in reconstruction history.
Speaker 9 (05:10):
Well, you know, like a lot of people of my age,
I was very drawn to the Civil War as a youth.
I always most people my age say they got really
involved during the one hundredth anniversary, the centennial of the
Civil War, because I look back and most of them
would have been four years old at that time. So
(05:30):
I think what happened is that it generated a lot
of interest in the Civil War history, and a lot
of people started reading about it as children. And that's
what I did, and then really didn't look into it
much after I turned about thirty years old. I'm a lawyer.
I teach immigration law at Hofstra Law School on Long Island.
(05:53):
I'm also for many years I am also a registered
lobbyist in New York State and I have represented thousands
of immigrants, so that took up most of my time.
But then in twenty ten, with the anniversary the Sisqui
Centennial of the Civil War coming up, I started to
(06:16):
do some research into immigration history during the Civil War.
And I thought I would do maybe four articles for
a local news source that reached out to immigrants about
their history, et cetera. And instead I wrote two hundred
and fifty articles on this, and I had over two
(06:36):
hundred and fifty thousand unique views by unique individuals over
those years, so it became quite large. Of course, you know,
by the end of the centennial, I was trying to
turn this into immigrants during reconstruction, and I wrote a
number of articles that were fairly popular. You know. I
(07:01):
also began to look at it and saying, really, immigrants
are something you want to put on the side. This
really is about black citizens who were not recognized.
Speaker 8 (07:13):
As citizens before eighteen sixty.
Speaker 9 (07:16):
Five, and that really needs to be a group that
I wanted to focus on. Now. I spent many years
investigating human rights in Central America, in Peru and in Africa,
and so I tried to use some of that experience
to look at what went on in human rights in
(07:39):
America in the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies. And you know,
as I began to read more and more, did research
into newspapers, read diaries, etc. I became very involved in it.
I think I've only been doing this for ten years,
which is probably more than about ninety five percent of Americans.
(07:59):
War didn't to be into the reconstruction here. In fact,
in nineteen or I should say in twenty thirteen, when
I started doing this, it only read six books on reconstruction,
which I'm told is more than most people have. But
since then, I've read about two hundred and fifty books
on reconstruction and still reading almost every day.
Speaker 7 (08:23):
That's a good happen to get into. And I think Patrick,
you bring a very unique experience to you know, this
water scope of history here, because reconstruction is incredibly important,
you know, and it's something that is clearly misunderstood by
many Americans. You know, I mean even some young historians
you know, sort of misinterpret things, you know, as it
(08:45):
pertains to this post war era of reconstruction. So you know,
that's kind of what we're here to do is to
kind of clear up some of those things I've ran it.
We you know, reconstruction happens, you know, over the course
of several years, you know, and so obviously we're not
going to be able to knock down everything every problem
in a hour long podcast episode, you know. So, Patrick,
(09:05):
one thing that we do kind of want to talk
about too, because especially in the post war era, we
see the rise of and how you've described the Clan
as America's oldest terrorist organization. So how exactly, you know,
do you know, look into the Klan and how does
that affect reconstruction going forward?
Speaker 8 (09:25):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (09:25):
Sure, I mean there are a number of ways. One is,
there are several modern treatments of the Klan. Just in
the last year, we've had Fergus Bartowich right about the
Clan War, which is the Ulysses s. Grant essentially making
war on the Klan in South Carolina in eighteen seventy one.
(09:48):
In eighteen seventy two, Elayne Parsons did a book Ku
Klux because at the time, although it was called the
Ku Klux Klan, they typically refer to themselves as Kluxers
or Ku Klux and that's an overall history of the Klan,
but also it focuses on the types of medium messages
(10:12):
that the Klan was trying to send out. You know,
right now we have social media et cetera, et cetera,
and the Klan was using social media of the eighteen sixties.
You know, they did not have tons of money. So
if they're dressing up in gowns, if they're writing at night,
if they have secret oaths and secret words in which
(10:38):
to spread their fear, they're really creating social media presence.
In the eighteen sixties, people would often say, oh, we're
not sure if they were the ku Klux. We know
that they were Confederate ghosts, because the ku Klux would
say that we're not living men who you could prosecute.
(10:58):
We are people who who were ghosts who were killed
by the Yankees, and we're coming back to revenge ourselves
on blacks and on and on white Republicans who were
seen as traders.
Speaker 6 (11:13):
And we've just passed the one hundred and sixtieth anniversary
of Appomatics, and you know, in a few weeks time,
by the time this episode comes out, we'll have passed
the anniversary of Johnson surrender in Carolina.
Speaker 9 (11:27):
So this is.
Speaker 6 (11:28):
Appropriate time, right to be wrapping up the war and
putting aside all the one hundred and sixtieth events and
starting the one hundred and sixtieth anniversary cycle of reconstruction,
which I understand doesn't have a massive, big following, and
there's not going to be any you know, one hundred
and sixtieth anniversary conferences or anything like that. Right, But
(11:50):
as we kind of jump into the post war years, right,
the war comes to an end by December of eighteen
sixty five, we'll see the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment
abolishing slavery. At the same time, in states like Louisiana
and Tennessee, places where reconstruction had really kind of already
been in effect effectively since eighteen sixty two sixty three,
(12:12):
we start to see a return of a loyalist government.
We start to, i mean, think about Mississippi, a place
rife in secession, rife in the Confederate movement, probably more
so postwar than wartime.
Speaker 8 (12:27):
But what the man who.
Speaker 6 (12:31):
Fills Jefferson Davis's seat is a black man in highm revels.
We're seeing all these things happening in reconstruction, and that
pretty much brings about an automatic resistance, doesn't it, because
it's it's I think I heard you say last year
at the Emergen Civil War Conference was that you know
this progress, you can have progress, but you'll always have resistance,
(12:53):
and sometimes it's violent resistance.
Speaker 8 (12:55):
So what is that?
Speaker 6 (12:56):
You know, we're kind of alluded to it there with
the clusters, but what does it need us to.
Speaker 9 (13:02):
Well, you know, it's interesting because General Gordon, who is
one of Lee's most trusted generals, told the crowd of
mixed race people in Georgia, he said, for blacks, we
opposed your freedom because we had bought you. And here
(13:24):
in the years after the Civil War ended, people still
thought of themselves as having been tremendously deprived by the
freedom of black people. And in fact, I was looking
at one state's recap of its losses, and it was
hundreds of millions of dollars. But when you looked at
(13:44):
it broke broken down. Almost all of it was people
were free.
Speaker 7 (13:49):
You know.
Speaker 9 (13:50):
It wasn't that banks had been burned, or that produce
was stolen, et cetera. It was the main asset of
most white people was their slaves. And so what you
have is an almost immediate revulsion against this. So you know,
let's just take a quick look back at how we
(14:12):
discover that. You know, we look at the reconstruction. Everybody
always as well, it starts right after the surrendered. But
you know, as you've said, with New Orleans, right around
the same time that the surrendered, it was celebrating the
first anniversary of its first black public school. So there
(14:33):
were reconstruction efforts in many, many areas of the South,
really beginning in eighteen sixty two when Ben Butler welcomes contrabands,
which is a term we should never use. These were
refugees who were escaping slavery, and he welcomed them into
his lines at Fortress Monroe in Virginia. From then on
(14:57):
you do see Lincoln his generals abolitionists, particularly women in
the North, who want to do something more than make
war on the Confederates. They want to reconstruct the South
so that blacks can have some type of equal rights
and some guiding say in the future of the country. Now,
(15:23):
President Johnson sends Grant down south to report on what
the condition of the South is, and he actually gives
a fairly lukewarm report on it, but he also sends
Carl Schurz, who was a German immigrant. He had been
a young person who had participated in the eighteen forty
(15:44):
eight revolution in Germany, had to flee, came to the
United States and became one of the largest political voices
in the United States. And he goes down to South
Carolina and then he goes throughout the Gulf States to
report on what he's seeing.
Speaker 8 (16:04):
And what he.
Speaker 9 (16:05):
Says is that there is a system of terrorism. This
was in July of eighteen sixty five, so this isn't
something that happens much later. This is something that southern
white people were already starting to come to terms with.
What he reports is is that if you're a black
(16:26):
person and you're trying to organize, you will be shot down.
If you're a courier for the army and you're taking
orders from one position to another, you'll be shot down.
If you're a white Republican. And let's remember that, yes,
there were five hundred thousand to a million Southerners in
the Confederate Army, but there were one hundred thousand Southerners
(16:49):
who were in the Union Army. Those were white Southerners.
There were another one hundred thousand blacks in.
Speaker 8 (16:54):
The Union Army.
Speaker 9 (16:56):
So when we're looking at this, these are very divided communities.
It's not as though everybody in these communities was anti
reconstruction or anti United States, because blacks made up a
third of the people in the South, and there was
a sizable proportion, about ten percent of the white population
(17:18):
that was loyal to the United States. But they were
immediately attacked. And it's interesting because Sure's talks to Peter
osta House, who is another German refuge and was in
the United States Army. He was a general, and he
said that the state of affairs would essentially put all
(17:42):
Union men in danger as soon as the United States
withdraws federal troops from the South. And we often think of, well,
they're going to withdraw the federal troops in eighteen seventy
seven after Rutherford B. Hayes's election or maybe non election,
(18:02):
depending on how you view it, But that's not really
what happened.
Speaker 8 (18:06):
You know.
Speaker 9 (18:07):
What we see in the South is a very very
quick reduction in the military. I don't know if you've
heard this in Louisiana, but a lot of people will
talk to you about their stories from their great grandparents
about what it was like during reconstruction. You were stopped
on the street by the United States Army, they told
(18:30):
you what to do, they put you in jail, et cetera.
And let's remember that the United States Army had between
one point five million to two million people during the
Civil War. Except the problem you have is is that
by eighteen sixty six there's only sixty one thousand Union
(18:50):
troops in the South. You know, people forget about this
because they always remember the Grand Review in Washington, and
you know, it's funny, you say, Okay, what did they
do with those men after they had the Grand Review?
Did they go back down? Said no, they went home,
you know. And it wasn't just people coming to Washington.
(19:12):
There were many states that also organized these types of
grand reviews in that capital in Albany, they did it
for New York State troops. And so what you find
is you went from having one point five million people
in the South in June of eighteen sixty five down
(19:32):
to sixty one thousand. By March of eighteen sixty six,
there's only forty one thousand troops remaining, and by September
there was seventeen thousand Now, when I say these numbers
were talking about ten Confederate states, there were more in
Texas because they were there primarily.
Speaker 8 (19:53):
To observe.
Speaker 9 (19:55):
Maximilian the Emperor, who was put in by France. They
were not really doing that much in terms of protecting blacks.
But you know, for the ten states you basically had
by eighteen sixty seven, the only about two thousand in
each state.
Speaker 7 (20:16):
Which is yeah, now, I mean it's just it's and
this is how I explained to my students, especially when
you're talking about the reconstruction era, is that there's never
enough manpower, there's never enough you know, money that goes
to actually reconstructing the South. And I think part of
that Andrew Johnson is sort of to blame there, you know.
(20:37):
And Johnson definitely doesn't help. Even though Johnson's one of
those individuals that can't stand sort of the you know,
top three percent of Southern you know, slate owners, you know,
but he is he is, in you know, by his
very nature, a Southerner, you know, so he does have
some Southern sympathies, you know, and so he's not definitely
he's definitely not helping the situation at all.
Speaker 9 (21:00):
Well, now, it's going to say that he's doing more
than not helping. One of the first things he does
after the war ends is sell off all the cavalry horses.
And so what you'll often find is there may only
be two thousand Union troops in a particular state, and
they're all infantry. So you can imagine there are nighttime
(21:25):
raids by night riders who initially not the Klan, they
were local organizations, but then by eighteen sixty eight they're
the Klan. They're mounted, they know where everybody is, they
know all the secret passages to get away from the army,
and the army is chasing them on foot.
Speaker 5 (21:46):
Yeah, And the thing I was going to bring in
up to is the way you described how there's such
a quick downturn and downsize of the army and then
but people still today will say like, oh, well, you know.
Speaker 6 (22:00):
I remember doing my great grandpappy told me. I told
my grandpappy, who told my dad, who told me. It
sounds a lot like the well, you know, my great
great grandpappy he rode with forest, and it's like at
this point he is like an army of three million
by the count of So it makes me wonder. Then
(22:24):
when people talk about reconstruction, they say, well, you know
this happened. I know because it happened to my family.
How many of it is just an instant that's been
extrapolated from the historical record. It sounds good, so it
becomes the family legend, family war, and you get stuck
with it. But one thing, and Bow and I talked
about this in our kind of pre production was one
(22:47):
of the great myths, and I came across it a
lot when I was working in public history. I think
it's something that's just become kind of embedded in people's
kind of understanding of the post.
Speaker 8 (22:59):
War construction your South.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
They'll say things like, well, you know, the clan didn't
start out violent, It only got violent. It was it
was a social club, you know, So how does that right?
Social club? Social club for you know, beating and abusing
and harassing a free black population, right.
Speaker 8 (23:18):
That's their main activity? Guys?
Speaker 9 (23:19):
I mean, come on, yeah, yeah, I mean I think
when we take a look at the history of the Klan,
the Clan, the later Klan actually said it was started
in Pulaski, Tennessee, which is true. On Christmas Day eighteen
sixty five. I'm like, didn't they have kids? How could
(23:39):
they get together for a meeting on Christmas Day? But
actually it seems like it started in June of eighteen
sixty six. At the very beginning, it did have some
mystical notions about it, and people who look at like
grand cyclops and wizards and and so forth. They did
(24:01):
that on purpose, because they wanted to create a supernatural appearance.
You know, as I said earlier, they wanted blacks to
think that they were Confederate soldiers who had been resurrected
from the dead. Let's also remember who these people were.
You know, there's a common view of the clan that
(24:24):
they were ne'er do wells, people who really weren't very
well educated. But at least in the initial clan, most
of them were professionals. Most of them had the equivalent
of a high school degree. Some of them had gone
to college. Some were in professions like lawyers. I'm a lawyer,
so I have to take some responsibility for that. So
(24:47):
they had put this together. Were they initially violent? No, no,
it doesn't mean they weren't planning to be violent, But
at least in eighteen sixty six, there were no reports
of them carrying out attacks. They would appear locally again
in costume. Now they did not appear with the white hoods.
(25:10):
They did not appear in white robes. That was created
by Dixon, which later created that view in Birth of
a Nation by D. W.
Speaker 8 (25:21):
Griffith.
Speaker 9 (25:23):
But they did wear very very odd clothing. They could
be of all different colors. Red was particularly useful for
them because it had that image of blood, and they
would go around so that blacks in the neighborhood Republicans
in the neighborhood wouldn't know that they existed. But again,
(25:43):
they were not killing anyone, they were not beating anyone.
It's really in eighteen sixty seven that the clan begins
to take its wrath out again on blacks and on Republicans.
The Republicans were not all from the North, as I
say there. You know, these were people that Confederate loyalists
(26:04):
would call scallawags. They were native to the South, but
they wanted to stay part of the United States during
the war, and they wanted to make sure that they
were reunited with the Northern States and not be a
separate area. So you know, they were getting harassed, they
(26:26):
were getting attacked, and in eighteen sixty eight. In January,
there are reports in national newspapers of the clan killing people. So,
you know, we don't exactly know how many people were
killed in eighteen sixty seven, although they were involved in violence.
But a year and a half after they were first
(26:48):
drawn up, they are engaged in deadly violence against their opponents.
By that time, they're not just appearing in Pulaski or
in its neighboring communities, because in eighteen sixty seven they
were primarily in those areas. They were beginning to appear
all over the all over the South.
Speaker 7 (27:09):
So Patrick, why don't we, you know, we talk about
how the clan starts off as you know, the sort
of seemingly non violent organization, and then we see an
uptick you know, as years go on, and everyone typically
will point to, you know, the Civil Rights Act of
nineteen sixty four, but forget about the Civil Rights Act
of eighteen sixty six, which you know, arguably that's for
(27:30):
the very first time Congress has to pass this piece
of legislation that identifies that identify as formally free black
slaves as citizens. So do we see an uptick in
violence after we see the National Congress pass something like this.
Speaker 9 (27:48):
You know, I would just say that the violence had
already been upticking. The Civil Rights Act of eighteen sixty
six was passed in reaction to widespread violence against particularly
against black people. You know, if we look, we have
(28:08):
the Memphis Riot in the spring of eighteen sixty six.
Over the summer of eighteen sixty six, you see the
New Orleans riot, you know, which is now called the
New Orleans massacre. The Memphis riot, forty people were killed,
all but one of them were black. In the New
Orleans riot, a mob descends on black marchers and kills
(28:34):
and again it's very difficult to figure out how many
people are killed, but between fifty and two hundred people. So,
you know, up until that time in eighteen sixty six,
a lot of Northern Republicans were not radicals. Many of
them had come on board because they wanted the Union reunited,
(28:56):
and they felt that Southerners, after their armies were it
would for their own good want to be reintegrated into
the Union. And most of them were not thinking of
blacks becoming voters. Now, Lincoln had already said that I
shouldn't say he said, but his Attorney General Bates had
(29:17):
said that blacks were citizens of the United States even
without the Fourteenth Amendment or the eighteen sixty six Civil
Rights Act, So at least within the Republican Party, they
did believe that blacks were citizens. But they wanted to
do something that would set down that blacks were citizens
(29:37):
so that the United States could protect them, because if
they're not US citizens, what's the United States federal government
doing protecting them from the legitimate authority of states.
Speaker 6 (29:49):
That brings on to another question I have, is you
kind of mentioned that at first it's not like a
national thing, regional thing. It's very much in local, state
by state. So we see, you know, if Tennessee is
the first in December or June of eighteen sixty six
with the the clan, we see Louisiana too has its
(30:13):
own with the you know, white leaguers and the Knights
and yeah, and Wade Hampton and his Red Shirts in
South Carolina, and like there's these little movements and all
of them, you know, I'm going back to my roots
with Tennessee. You know, all of them are spurred on
by a little instance, right, one thing that leads to
(30:35):
to this kind of outbreak. And in Tennessee. It's it's
Parson Brownlow right, it's it's the reconstruction governor of the
state who would replaced Andrew Johnson. And really it he's
kind of the spark and everything else kind of follows
right after that. But I'm thinking back to, you know,
(30:56):
time spent in Franklin, and you know, there's a there's
a riot takes place there in the summer of eighteen
sixty six or sixty seven, and it's only I think
it's sixty six. Yeah, and there's only you know, a
month or two goes by, and Franklin has its own
den of the Klan. It just pops up in reaction
to what.
Speaker 8 (31:13):
Had just happened.
Speaker 9 (31:16):
I doubt that it was in reaction. I think they
looked at that as a marketing opportunity. You know, the
Klan by eighteen sixty seven eighteen sixty eight had become
more sophisticated in reaching out to areas where they saw
trouble brewing.
Speaker 7 (31:34):
You know.
Speaker 9 (31:34):
So, for instance, as we said with Karl Schurtz, which
was in eighteen sixty five, if blacks were moving from
where they lived to another place, the white people in
the place they were leaving would then attack them so
that they wouldn't move. They wanted the blacks to stay
there and to be essentially workers for them. What you
(31:58):
would see in those situations as the clan would come
in and say, we will work with you white people
to maintain solidarity and rule by white people. In fact,
they put out their constitution in Mississippi which said we
must be governed by only white people. And they wanted
to make that pretty clear because if people might be
(32:23):
attacking local black people who are trying to assert their
rights by moving, you want them to have an ideology
that would be part of a much broader national ideology.
And as we could see when the clan has revived
in the twentieth century, they're able to actually use that
(32:44):
ideology to win many recruits in northern States. You know,
Indiana had the fastest growth of the clan. In the
nineteen twenties. I live on Long Island. One in seven
white Protestant men Long Island joined mc clan. Now, there
were no real clan claverns outside of the South during reconstruction.
(33:08):
There were some clan activities outside of the South, but
they didn't have a very large number. But by the
nineteen twenties, many of the clan, and again this is
a reconstructed clan, were in the North because the ideology worked.
Speaker 7 (33:27):
Yeah, and that's you know, I do like that you
brought up, you know, especially in the post war era
that you know a lot of because because there is
a sort of mis you know, conception there that every
Republican is a radical Republican and their radicalism has nothing
to do with hanging ten in help in Hawaii. It's
(33:49):
just simply the notion of giving African Americans, you know,
a sick rights of citizenship. So I guess Patrick, in
your opinion, how how exactly does the Clan affect the
South's reconstruction and kind of going on to that, are
we still living in the shadow of Southern reconstruction?
Speaker 9 (34:12):
Well, you know when we talk about reconstruction and basically
what happened with the Klan and its successor organizations, because
by eighteen seventy seven, the Klan is almost dead as
an organization, although many of its members go on to
these groups like the White League or to the Red Shirts,
which was in South Carolina, in North Carolina. But let's
(34:34):
take a quick look here, you know, we look at Alabama.
There were Republicans in control of the state from eighteen
sixty eight until eighteen seventy two, not eighteen seventy two,
but eighteen seventy four. After they're deposed in eighteen seventy four,
(34:55):
the Democrats, which by the eighteen seventies had become allied
with Klan and with these different white organizations, held the
governorship until nineteen eighty three. So they basically had a
reach that wasn't just for reconstruction or Jim Crow, but
reached much much further than that. We could look at Arkansas.
(35:17):
The Republicans held it from eighteen sixty eight to eighteen
seventy four. The next Republican who was elected after they
were deposed in eighteen seventy four was Mike Huckabee in
nineteen ninety six. You know, so we're and I could
go through all ten states. But you know, particularly for
(35:39):
my age, we used to call it the Solid South.
They weren't solid just because people loved the Democratic Party.
It was that those whose interests might be served by
the Republicans in nineteen ten nineteen twenty were very very
much suppressed. They were primarily black.
Speaker 6 (36:02):
And Ye, what I think we'll do here in just
a second is we'll take do a quick break for commercials, right,
and then we'll jump back in and I kind of
want to talk a little bit about the Black Codes
as well, so we'll be right back with some more
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(37:08):
head on over to buy me a Coffee and become
a member today for exclusive live streams, including one just
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on First Canadian Para. We've got more episodes like that
coming down the pipe.
Speaker 8 (37:24):
To join us, then.
Speaker 6 (37:26):
Check out our designs by the Bearded historian Jeff Williams.
You can hit over his Etsy page down below. You'll
find a link in the show notes in the description
as well as always can subscribe to Homebrew History. Help
us continue to fill those coffers so that we can
keep doing this and having fun. If you want to
(37:47):
have your questions aired on the show, be sure to,
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questions in to our wonderful guests like Patrick, who you
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(38:07):
do a series twice a week, but be sure to
stay up to date and turn those downloads on. I
think what we'll do now is we'll head into a
commercial break that I don't do, so you don't have
to look at me. I don't have to look at you,
and you don't have to hear me pretty good, I
(39:22):
don't mean it less awkward. Yeah, you're not just standing
there while I talk.
Speaker 7 (39:26):
We're just like okay, all right, well I need the
hold time.
Speaker 6 (39:31):
You want to come back now?
Speaker 7 (39:34):
So Patrick, before before we left off with Joey's wonderful
face and in all those commercials there, we kind of
wanted to get back on the show and kind of
talk about the black codes. So can you kind of
tell our listeners what exactly are the black codes?
Speaker 9 (39:54):
When when I talk about Reconstruction, a lot of people
will say, well, you know, white people in the South
were very much oppressed by governments that were put in
by black votes. And you know, and I actually believed
that when I was a kid, because I had heard
that too. You know, up here in New York in
(40:16):
the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, you probably got a
similar view that somebody would have gotten in the South.
Maybe a different view on the Civil War, but Reconstruction
was pretty much the same that, you know, Southern whites
were oppressed by the blacks and that they black people
had misruled their states and that's why the Black Codes
(40:39):
were passed. The problem is when I looked into it,
most of the Black codes were passed in eighteen sixty five.
So after the Civil War, you know, most of the
people who were able to vote, actually all of the
people who were able to vote in the eleven Southern
states were white, and the only people who could hold
office were white because Andrew Johnson did not follow through
(41:04):
by allowing blacks to be recognized as citizens and to vote,
which meant that these new legislatures, which had been elected
by the white people, many of whom were Confederates, would
put in laws that you would think would deal with
what starving refugees or disabled veterans or rebuilding railroads, etc.
(41:31):
But that's not what they did. The first thing they
did was put in the Black Codes. And in fact,
you will find by a fall of eighteen sixty five,
almost every legislature is at least considering a Black code.
And it's interesting because for the first time really in
Southern history, blacks got together and tried to oppose these
(41:54):
Black codes. And you know, if we look at it,
in Charleston, there was a meeting of state delegations from
different ame churches and they said, we do not understand
why we are being punished since we haven't done anything.
(42:15):
We don't understand. Now, if you look at these codes,
we can take a look at Mississippi. Under Mississippi's code,
you couldn't vote. Okay, we all knew that you couldn't
hold property. If you were found to be wandering in
a neighborhood. In other words, you were going to another
town to get a job or to find your relatives,
(42:37):
because many people had been separated from their children or
from their parents, you would be arrested, okay. If you
were arrested, very often for similar charges, a white person
would be fined, whereas a black person would be whipped.
They didn't do whippings on white people. The other thing
(43:00):
is they would also attach a fine to you, so
you get whipped, and then you have to pay two
or three hundred dollars, which would be three thousand to
six thousand dollars. If you couldn't pay that, you would
be sold on the courthouse steps. Now they weren't selling
you for life, but they would sell you to farmers
(43:23):
and industrialists, and you would have to work for them
until you had paid your debt. And of course who's
making those figures. Those are white people who are making figures.
And so what we see with these laws, we're seeing
both an attempt to control black people an attempt to
get revenge. And it's interesting because a lot of Southern
(43:46):
whites did not say because they had fought for the union,
but just because they had been happy that they had
been freed, we need to take revenge on them. And
the other thing is they want to make sure that
black people don't get the notion that they are going
to be citizens and that the government owes anything to them,
which is I had said when we're looking at the
(44:08):
South Carolina church people, they did say we're citizens.
Speaker 8 (44:16):
That becomes one of the.
Speaker 6 (44:18):
I think the most fascinating pieces, maybe the most unsettling
pieces of reconstruction. And BO you feel free to chime in.
That is when you know you're talking to a group
about what happens to know, at a historic site where
slavery existing, you're talking about the enslaved population, and then
you say, you know, on comes eighteen sixty five and
there's this belief in freedom, and you know you can
(44:42):
use the great W. E. B. Du Boys quote, which is,
you know, for a moment the slave stood free in
the sun and then turned back to slavery, and it's
it's slavery by other means. We can use all those
different expressions, but inevitably you get somebody that'll say, like, well,
you know, at least you know they were free, you know,
(45:03):
they had a roof over their head. And I was like,
at least.
Speaker 8 (45:05):
They were free.
Speaker 6 (45:06):
Yes, but that doesn't mean that the treatment or that
the oppression by the systematic oppression was any any any
less of a travesty than it was under the previous regime.
I don't know both, if you have anything to add
to that, yes, And.
Speaker 7 (45:22):
That's something very difficult for historical sites, you know, all
across the US South that did experience, you know, slavery,
you know, you know, prior to you know, the outbreak
of the American Civil War. And because there is a
fundamental misunderstanding of reconstruction, sometimes guess this is the first
time that they hear this information. And as we've already learned,
(45:44):
it's something I stress to my students that I teach
us that look, anytime the status quo is shaken, you
know there's going to be pushback of some kind. And again,
sometimes it can be violent. So some people even you know,
just in a basic conversation, you know anything that even
in the you know, Reconstruction era, you know, black people
(46:05):
earn their freedom, you know, but that doesn't mean that
all of a sudden, you know, the South is you know,
happy lucky that they're that they're free, and treat them
as equals. It's going to take you know, another one
hundred years, you know, of fighting for for civil rights,
for fighting for the basics of citizenship, to have the
security to vote in the in the first place, you know.
(46:27):
So you're absolutely right, Joey, is that this is you know,
a complex, complicated subject that sometimes people just don't under
they don't have the experience.
Speaker 6 (46:38):
Now, Patrick and Bow, I'm going to put the question
up in the bar here, and I just want to
get your reaction to it, okay, And I'm I'm sorry
we're sitting here talking.
Speaker 8 (46:57):
I just.
Speaker 6 (46:59):
I I just I have to ask.
Speaker 7 (47:03):
The thing is that you know, Joey and I both
have worked you know, in academia and in public history,
and sometimes people of the public, because of their lack
of understanding, are willing to ask these very outlandish questions.
So I'm kind of cure. It's here.
Speaker 6 (47:18):
So the question for listeners, right, does our shortcoming and
understanding reconstruction come from a misunderstanding of slavery and above
all race? Throw that one to the panel.
Speaker 7 (47:33):
That's a great question. I mean, clearly there's there's a
misunderstanding somewhere. But I also think too, you know, some
of this stuff and like Patrick kind of mentioned, you
know when when you know, at a very young age,
you know, we were sort of willing to accept, you know,
sort of these fabricated you know, facts about reconstruction, about
(47:55):
the American Civil War that because I mean when I
was a wee young land you know, I may have believed,
you know, in this idea that the South was just
fighting for states rights, you know, that didn't have anything
to do you know with African chatnel slavery at all,
you know, And I you know, I thank god, you know,
I've I've I've been called lunded demand uh since then
(48:19):
and have rectified you know, some of these issues.
Speaker 6 (48:22):
Is that that are your your woke milk toast milks.
Speaker 7 (48:28):
I've been called a lot of names, and you know what,
I've come to realize that I'm whatever you think I am.
I suppose I don't know.
Speaker 8 (48:35):
I'm curious what you think.
Speaker 9 (48:38):
Well, I think people don't understand slavery at all. You know, first,
I'm here in New York, and I'm sorry, we have
a call to begin. I'm here in New York, and
right next to where I am, I'm living on Long Island.
But in Brooklyn they had the same percentage of slaves
(48:58):
in Brooklyn Virginia. So in other words, it was not
a few people who had moved here from the South
who held personal slaves. These were people who were farming fields.
They were doing very similar work to what was being
done in Virginia. And yet we look at Brooklyn at
that time as being in a revolutionary state, not in
(49:22):
a slave state. In nineteen and eighteen twenty, of course,
New York does abolish slavery, although it takes some time
before the last people are free. So I think that
one of the things that we don't understand is is
that slavery. I won't say it was universal, but it
existed in most parts of the United States. And so
(49:44):
when we look at our ideology around slavery and ideology
around race, we're not just looking at something that was
imported from the South, that many parts of the North
had also developed this ideology because they all also had
excuses for why they maintained themselves on the labor of
(50:06):
black people. So I think that's important. The other thing,
of course, that most people will say. I think that
probably when I was young, people when I was young,
a lot of people would say, well, slavery wasn't all
that bad. And I don't think you'll meet anybody under
forty who says that. You know, they would see it
as very bad. But you know, for those of us
who were old, I'm about to be seventy, But what
(50:31):
I would say is is where you know, a lot
of us have a little bit of well, they had
a job to go to, they got fed, et cetera.
Their children would sold off. So it's a weird thing that,
you know, we would kill someone who took our children
and sold them off, or taking my parents and selling
them off. And yet we expect people were who are
(50:55):
black to just accept that. In the eighteen fifties and
eighteen sixties.
Speaker 6 (51:00):
Convinced that a lot of that though, comes from like
the it's a problem with memory and it's a problem
with understanding.
Speaker 8 (51:07):
I'm convinced that.
Speaker 6 (51:09):
That has its roots in the kind of Southern romantic
vision of slavery where it's you know, the benevolent slave
or the benevolent master, and the and the faithful slave,
and it's well, you know, the only reason they were
ever bad slaves was it was a bad master, and
so all slaves must have been good, So slavery must.
Speaker 8 (51:26):
Have been good.
Speaker 6 (51:27):
It's easy to run down that that rabbitle. Now, well,
I know we've done what we always do on this show,
which is where we start talking about something that's really,
really incredible, and we could spend all night doing it,
but inevitably we have to wrap the episode up. So
I want to throw it to Patrick for like last
(51:50):
few brief words and then let's jump into Boo Hicky.
All right, Patrick, anything else you want to add something
that I just want to.
Speaker 8 (51:58):
I'm sorry, I do.
Speaker 9 (51:59):
Just want to say a little bit about how we
remember reconstruction.
Speaker 8 (52:04):
There was always.
Speaker 9 (52:07):
After eighteen seventy seven or rewriting of the history of
reconstruction in the South, but really it got its main
propulsion forward to being a general understanding in the early
nineteen hundreds when William Dunning, who was from New Jersey
and taught at Columbia Law School, began to devote himself
(52:28):
to defending Southern whites treatment of blacks. Now, it's interesting
because he trained a whole group of historians, almost all
of whom were from the South, but he himself was
from New Jersey. He was one of the primary influences
for the writing of The Clansmen, which then became Birth
(52:49):
of a Nation, and that really led to the reconstruction
of the clan in the nineteen twenties. It became very,
very popular. Nineteen thirty, Margaret Mitchell in her book Gone
with the Wind, is defending the Klan, although Scarlett O'Haras
said the people who were in the clan were idiots.
(53:10):
But you know, there was a reconstruction of clan images
both in the North and in the South.
Speaker 8 (53:20):
And I think that's.
Speaker 9 (53:20):
Something we have to keep in mind that if you
went to college, if you studied history, you know this
stuff is bullshit. But if you didn't, a lot of
people may understand that there was some gentleness between master
and slave that was interrupted by the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
(53:41):
fifteenth Amendment.
Speaker 7 (53:44):
Yeah, you're absolutely right, and it doesn't help. And you
also have you know, President Woodrow Wilson airing you know,
Birth of a Nation at the White House, and he's
famously quoted in saying it's like writing history with lightning.
Speaker 8 (53:59):
Do we call them friend of the show? Woodrow Wilson
friend of the show?
Speaker 3 (54:04):
You know?
Speaker 7 (54:04):
When when I die and and inevitably go to Hell,
I'm gonna find Woodrow Wilson and set him up with
an eight round boxing match. He's He's first and the
second person is the in the inventor of coleslaw, keep
your wet nanny's cabbage away from me? Uh Hitler?
Speaker 6 (54:22):
Yeah right, strange, strange, but whatever. I'll take it.
Speaker 8 (54:30):
One more thing.
Speaker 9 (54:31):
My favorite beer is Beamish.
Speaker 7 (54:34):
Okay, all right, not a bad thing? Uh Patrick? What what?
Speaker 8 (54:39):
What boo Hicky?
Speaker 7 (54:40):
History is is something that you kind of polluted to?
Speaker 3 (54:43):
Uh?
Speaker 7 (54:44):
Is that any historian who can see a historical fact
and call out the bullshit where it is, it's effectively
my substitute for the word. Uh what? What exactly about
reconstruction or the black codes that people either just get
wrong completely, something that is misinterpreted some that you want
to dispel a myth about reconstruction?
Speaker 9 (55:03):
Now, well, I think that for many Americans, they look
at the impact of reconstruction on white Southerners, and I
think that the main thing to do, because reconstruction was
not like the Marshall Plan where we're restoring industrialization to
Europe after the Nazi Holocaust. This was really a reconstruction
(55:28):
so that we had a multi racial society, which was
not agreed to, at least by Southern whites and by
many people in the North. But I think what's interesting
is that if you don't look at it simply from
the lens of the white folks, but look at it
from the lens of the black folks who had been
suffering under slavery for three hundred years. Now we're free,
(55:51):
and what their hopes were and what they used that
time to be able to do. They developed the black churches,
they developed black schools. Most of the school teachers teaching
blacks in the South were not white people coming from
the North. They were native born black Southerners, Okay, And
we need to look at that, and we need to
(56:12):
look at their political organizations, their social organizations to see
what they were capable of. And while they lost the
political battle, many of those institutions survived for one hundred
years and actually recreated the first civil rights movement in
the second civil rights movement of the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 6 (56:37):
Incredible stuff. And it's always hard to do the little
shift from a good boo hicky like that to what's
in your cop?
Speaker 1 (56:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (56:47):
Now, I'm I'm going to be polite and I'm going
to go straight to Patrick and ask what's in your cup?
So this is segment we've had on the show since
its inception, is where you know, we talked about what
we're drinking, right because we've all sat around, we've had
ourselves a nice little poor You already mentioned your favorite
beer is Beamish, So let's let's go what what's in
your cup?
Speaker 9 (57:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (57:07):
Beamish?
Speaker 9 (57:08):
I wish I was drinking it right now when I
was over in Ireland. I love that. I would say
it's nothing important.
Speaker 8 (57:15):
I'm reading.
Speaker 9 (57:16):
I'm having a mixed berry seltzer from Wegmans. I don't
know if you even know what Wegmans is. It's supermarket
up in Rochester and Buffalo, but it's starting to spread
all over the country.
Speaker 6 (57:30):
One of these days, Bill, how about yourself?
Speaker 7 (57:32):
Yeah, I have some Tennessee whiskey cider. I have have
been on that. I'm I'm glad that I don't have
one of those addictive personalities, because I would, first of all,
not be on this show. I would just be a
drunk somewhere, living in a box under the bridge somewhere,
or in a van down by the river, as the
(57:52):
late great mister Farley put it. But no, it's good stuff.
A Tennessee whiskey cider is absolutely delight joey about yourself.
And then you said I was gonna hate you, So
what's uh what you got?
Speaker 8 (58:07):
Let's new?
Speaker 6 (58:07):
All right, I'm drinking a lemon gen sing in ginger
green tea.
Speaker 7 (58:15):
Are you sure you heard that?
Speaker 8 (58:17):
About to be seventy?
Speaker 6 (58:19):
It's the show is called home brew. It doesn't say
necessarily that it has to be an intoxicating liquor.
Speaker 7 (58:30):
Okay, it's a good point. I guess that's why I'm here.
Speaker 6 (58:33):
I suppose show is intentionally vague. All are welcome, you know,
to quote the gathering hymn at your local Catholic church,
All welcome here? Oh man, Well Patrick, I am just
(58:53):
I gotta be honest. I've so enjoyed uh this discussion
and really really just had a good time. People, of course,
are listeners and viewers. They can find more from you
on You've got Reconstruction Era the blog. You've also got
a Facebook presence, right, yes, yeah, So we'll put links
(59:14):
to both of you just.
Speaker 9 (59:15):
Here, Patrick Young, and I'll accept you.
Speaker 7 (59:19):
Joey, You're welcome, That's true. Joey actually sent me a
link to your blog and I had the opportunity this
afternoon to kind of read over a couple of articles
that you wrote there. Absolutely fantastic. So anybody that wants
to know more about Patrick, you know, that's where you
can find them, and of course on Facebook with Patrick.
This was a topic of discussion that we can expand
(59:42):
on for hours. But we want to thank you first
of all for coming on the show and helping us
out with a little bit of reconstructing reconstruction history.
Speaker 8 (59:51):
Thank you.
Speaker 6 (59:51):
Until next time, Everybody, cheers, cheers, everybody.
Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
Whole crew, that whole crew, talking about whole crew and reminding.
Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
The total brew a history pod past, going back to
the past when the littlest.
Speaker 7 (01:00:26):
Past it might leave you a gas.
Speaker 4 (01:00:30):
Are you biting inspired?
Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
But you'll never get tired.
Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
Of whole crew. That whole crew.
Speaker 4 (01:00:42):
Top scholars on the show with Joey and Boo that
whole crew, whole crew,
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