Voter intimidation, racial violence, an impeached president, an embattled Congress, threats of a civil war, and emboldened domestic terrorists are not a new phenomenon in American history. All have their roots in America's most violent, revolutionary, and contested era: Reconstruction. Beginning after the Civil War, Radical Republicans inside and outside Congress worked with free Black allies to found an American nation that lived up to its ideals. White domestic terrorists, backed by an increasingly recalcitrant Democratic Party, violently opposed the increased political power and civil rights of African Americans. In this first-year seminar, we will examine the contours of that contest, the world that it created, and the lasting influence of America's unfinished revolution. |