Category Archives: Postbellum Society

disruptive

Posted on August 12, 2015 by SUMPTER

150 years ago this week a Northern newspaper reprinted a report it found in a Petersburg, Virginia newspaper. A city that began the year under siege was trying to adjust to the huge change in the economic-social system caused by … Continue reading →

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elective*

Posted on August 5, 2015 by SUMPTER

This Thomas Nast cartoon was published in the August 5, 1865 issue of Harper’s Weekly. You can read more about it at the Library of Congress: “Centerfold prints show Columbia considering why she should pardon Confederate troops who are begging … Continue reading →

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Banned in Charleston

Posted on July 31, 2015 by SUMPTER

DURYEA’s ZOUAVES, the white regiment stationed at Charleston which refused to allow the negro soldiers full swing, was ordered from the city for this heinous offence. Afterwards their colors were demanded of them. The Colonel refused to give them up, … Continue reading →

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new American revolution?

Posted on July 25, 2015 by SUMPTER

In a long 1777 letter to the Committee of Secret Correspondence Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane, American Commissioners in Paris, wrote the following optimistic assessment of Europe’s regard for America and its rebel cause: Tyranny is so generally established in … Continue reading →

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progress on government plantations

Posted on July 24, 2015 by SUMPTER

From The New-York Times July 22, 1865: The Freedmen of the South The Successful Progress of the Policy of the Government. It is gratifying to know that the Freedman’s Bureau in Washington, under the management of Major-Gen. HOWARD, and the … Continue reading →

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tech times

Posted on July 23, 2015 by SUMPTER

150 years ago today The New-York Times headlined some remarkable technology. The world’s largest ironclad was launched three months after the Civil War ended, and some people imagined trains running up in the air over Broadway. The USS Dunderberg was … Continue reading →

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Southern roadblock?

Posted on July 16, 2015 by SUMPTER

If delegations from the rebel states are re-admitted to the Congress without conditions, could they stifle the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery? From The New-York Times July 9, 1865: Letter from Wendell Phillips. THE RESTORATION OF THE SOUTHERN … Continue reading →

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cleaning up

Posted on July 13, 2015 by SUMPTER

From a Seneca County, New York newspaper apparently in July 1865: The party which went out to bury the dead in the Wilderness battle field, took with them twenty wagon loads of coffins and three weeks’ rations. Poet Thomas Bailey … Continue reading →

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