"If I'd known beforehand what my position was to be, I should have remained with my regiment." Ann Yoost Brecke Pennsylvania doesn't. And so they headed back South as soon as they could. In Campbell's district, some blacks were even seen carrying hunting rifles. Historians describe how white Southerners felt about black civil rights, and explain the intent of white supremacist groups. Allowing southern states unchecked power so soon after the war, the committee said, was "madness and lunacy." But to honor the dead you have to enhance the cause. WALKER: Johnson is opposed to an expansion of Federal power. BLIGHT: Great changes take time, and this is a great experiment in biracial democracy. AYERS: Grant refuses to help. Savannah Film Commission These black men, many of whom had been slaves only eighteen months earlier, they wear that uniform as if it's their right, as if they're Americans, too. Abram Colby John L. Spencer University of Alabama Center for Public Television and Radio Opportunities open to him, which could have been, in which would have been inconceivable before this moment. Lillian Baulding The fight for control of Reconstruction had begun. But that kind of independence for freedmen, southern planters don't want, the Freedmen's Bureau doesn't want it. READING, TUNIS CAMPBELL: NARRATOR: Waldburg got his answer: St. Catherine's Congress passed a law forbidding any white person from setting foot on the island. "He owes it to his God, who has wrought his freedom. DANA D. NELSON, HISTORIAN: Pierce saw it not only as the possible ending of his family's plantations in Georgia, but he saw it as the end of the way of life that he treasured. NARRATOR: That same fall, nine black soldiers and their white captain climbed aboard a sternwheeler in New Orleans, and headed up river. NARRATOR: It came to be called the Lost Cause. John E. Allen The campaign of 1868 came down to a battle over Reconstruction. They are not willing to just take this lying down. Mark Jervis, COLORIST & ON-LINE EDITOR READING, TUNIS CAMPBELL: Just before every election they commence trying to intimidate by arresting all prominent colored men. Now, he was anxious to protect poor whites from what they saw as a new threat. So he's entering the last part of the Confederacy to surrender. 'Bama Belle, Tuscaloosa, AL Two weeks later, Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Bill. This is the first time he's seen his wife and sons in about two years. ", DUNCAN: When Campbell's called to trial, his lieutenants send out word, and African Americans come off the plantations. BLIGHT: Moderate Republicans were forced into the Radical camp because they had to oppose Andrew Johnson. He had been reluctant to send more troops to the South. United States Congress Many saw this as proof that emancipation would finally give black men and women a true stake in the land they had toiled on for centuries. Former Confederates held their breath, and steeled themselves for the worst. We hold the Union together." Theatre Tuscaloosa: Doug Perry, Jeanette Robertson "An old social order had been destroyed," says Eric Foner, historian at Columbia University and author of Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution. He had risen from poverty and identified with poor white southerners, who, before the war, had far outnumbered the slave owners. The Bureau built schools for the former slaves and fed and clothed war refugees, black and white. NARRATOR: For four million African Americans in the South, news of "forty acres and a mule" spread as fast as the contagion of freedom itself. Judge Richard Gergel's acclaimed book is now the basis of a gripping PBS documentary on how a soldier's savage blinding propelled an awakening in a president and a Charleston judge. There are alligators. "BIG DRUNK" / VOTING / TUNIS CAMPBELL RUNS FOR OFFICE. They came to buy land. Henry Mintz She was spirited, intelligent, and much admired by local bachelors. NARRATOR: Colby's attackers could not hide behind their hoods. 2. NARRATOR: In Congress, a former slave challenged whites' deepest beliefs about race and class. It was a disaster. Louisiana Film Commission NARRATOR: In July 1913, more than fifty thousand Civil War veterans gathered on the battlefield at Gettysburg. But at the same time very savvy about the nature of power relations. Their views were shared by many in populous northern states like New York and New Jersey. He agreed to represent his district at the state convention. DUNCAN: Tunis Campbell was determined not to let whites overcome blacks in areas that he could control. AYERS: White southern landowners said, "If you think for a minute that I'm going to give up my hard-earned money to build up the government to take care of colored people, you're crazy.". In December 1864, Sherman offered the port city to President Lincoln as a Christmas gift. PRODUCED & DIRECTED BY Even with the South defeated, Lincoln warned, the future would be "fraught with great difficulty." MARSTON: Everyone was very happy that Twitchell was gone. The Republicans were chased out of the convention hall and shot down. TUNNELL: Midway through the conventions, you can see the conservative newspapers covering the conventions sort of searching for some new language to describe these people. BLIGHT: The vast majority of northerners who moved south moved there because the South was now, uh, the new pioneer society. Beau Fort Plantation and the Brittain Family He was very idealistic about the possibilities for African American citizenship. NARRATOR: The growing violence in the South turned the mid-term elections of 1866 into a referendum on Presidential Reconstruction. Historians review the problems of re-building a region destroyed by four years of bitter war. NARRATOR: In this charged atmosphere, the Butlers had to negotiate with their former slaves. MARSTON: A southern girl, following the Civil War, there were no men, there were no men to marry. Madison Bay Company (Leib Image Archives) NARRATOR: On April 24, 1877, a crowd lined the streets of New Orleans, as the last of the federal troops stationed there marched towards the steamship that would take them away. NARRATOR: Andrew Johnson had no sympathy for wealthy planters. NARRATOR: By 1913, many of the rights won by African Americans during Reconstruction had been taken away. Societé d'Europe It's still the largest export of the United States. TUNNELL: They want submissive, obedient employees. When, um, Kate's oldest brother, who is not killed in the war comes back, he hardly speaks, she says, for many months. AYERS: No matter what color your skin is, no matter what your status before the war had been, it's a new order for everybody. Newspapers openly called for assassination. We had "the very best liquor, [and] ice, lemons and sugar," wrote one state senator. LSU in Shreveport, Noel Memorial Library But he's a very bright young man, and a fast learner. TUNNELL: In all, twenty-five people are arrested for complicity in the Coushatta massacre. Here is the extended first look at Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. South Carolina Historical Society NARRATOR: With her father dead and her brothers away fighting for the Confederacy, managing Brokenburn fell to Kate Stone and her mother. Old Court House Museum Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition NARRATOR: Even as Lee surrendered to Grant, scores of newly emancipated men and women were arriving at St. Catherine's in the Sea Islands of Georgia. Arranged and Directed by Joel Cohen, ACTORS And they also do not want to work for low wages. Estate of James Karales MARSTON: Once they were arrested, they were going to die. The Confederate rebellion had been crushed. They shuffled their feet. Johanna Baker Not that I am unable or unwilling to pay my way; but simply because I happen to be of a darker complexion. "It surprises me that you yielded," Lynch said to Grant. Thomas Smith Barnes But very soon it became clear that Andrew Johnson wanted a rapid, lenient restoration of the Union with as little alteration of the Constitution and the creation of black civil and political rights as possible. North Carolina State Capitol Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center Right after the war, he'd come up the Red River and settled in the northwest part of the state. And he's almost a corpse now, and he becomes a metaphor for their own broken dreams. No matter what happens politically, you've got to figure out how you're going to feed yourself and your family. And the result of it, of course, is that the Republicans are driven from power. The Loyal Georgian NARRATOR: Kate Stone was 21-years-old when the Civil War came to her doorstep. The Penn School Collection. This astonishing political revolution is effectively portrayed via commentary by dozens of experts, interviews, documents and graphic, often heart rending visuals in the first two episodes of “Reconstruction: America After the Civil War,” a four-part series written and narrated by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on PBS. Dividing Ridge Farm 68th Ohio Volunteer Infantry He owned a slave or two, but he was not a member of the plantation aristocracy. He found a state in chaos. "Nothing can be more beautiful than a cotton field," one travel writer declared, "when the snowy globes of wool are ready for picking, and the swart laborers, with sacks suspended from their shoulders, wander between the rows.". His back had been badly injured, and he had lost the use of his left hand. Philadelphia Inquirer A Yankee officer would venture to the most violent corner of Louisiana to try to impose order. But it was never widely enforced. Militant whites in the city vowed to stamp out black agitators and Radical Republicans. That fall, southern blacks embraced Congress' plan. Black children could be seized from poor families and forced to work in the fields. At the courthouse in Sparta, the county seat, Captain Twitchell set up office as the sole Freedmen's Bureau agent for the parish. They set in and whipped me a thousand licks more. With him was his only surviving brother-in-law, George King. People who are demanding that they be treated in a decent fashion. The New York Public Library Instead, the president warned that "Reconstruction," as he called it, would be "fraught with great difficulty.". For that reason the Democrats saw themselves as trying to put the North and South together as quickly as possible during the Civil War and as soon as it's over, trying to knit North and South together at the expense of black men. Historians describe the creation of schools and focus on education — for both blacks and whites — in the South during Reconstruction. Others vowed to wage a new war to protect their way of life, and a racial order they believed ordained by God. Frank Capria, Kingpin Productions NARRATOR: Three days later, the statesman who led the Union through the Civil War was assassinated. The retreat of the North left blacks across the South feeling betrayed and deeply in danger. Donald Lenear New York Tribune Marshall Twitchell and other Freedmen's Bureau agents delivered a different message: No matter what they'd heard, no forty acres and a mule was coming from this government. James O. Horton And -- and I'm named after one of 'em. Eighty thousand widows in Alabama, applying for support and aid. Madison Bay Company (Leib Image Archives) NARRATOR: On the opening day, the Clerk of the House refused to announce the names of the Southern delegates in his roll call. NARRATOR: Twitchell came to be viewed with suspicion by some of his white neighbors. To Republicans, what's at stake here, really, is the definition of freedom. If it had to be done, he would have done it. Oak Alley Plantation, Vacherie, LA They believed the Southern states had left the union and destroyed their status as states. In the terrible depression that followed, Northerners had little patience for the plight of Southern blacks. "It robbed me of my education.". Douglass turned to a companion and said, "Whatever else this man may be, he is no friend of our race.". NARRATOR: The Republicans managed to push the bill through. They don't want people asking to be guaranteed their wages. Just twenty-five, he was the youngest member of the U.S. House. State your age, where you were born, and where you now live. The white South's own version of its history became a kind of civic religion. Paul Lowery Congressional questioner & Marshall Twitchell William S. LeBow, LOCATIONS North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh NARRATOR: After four bloody years of Civil War, Americans, North and South would continue to fight over the meaning of freedom, the meaning of citizenship, and the survival of the nation itself. FAUST: Kate expresses a lot of fear throughout the war, and it's most often fear of armed slaves. MARSTON: My great-grandfather, Captain Marston, was rounded up in this. James G. 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