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HIST 119: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877

by Open Yale Courses - David Blight

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Latest episodes

Lecture 27 - Legacies of the Civil War

August 25, 2017

Professor Blight finishes his lecture series with a discussion of the legacies of the Civil War. Since the nineteenth century, Blight suggests, there have been three predominant strains of Civil War memory, which Blight defines as…
Lecture 26 - Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory

August 25, 2017

Having dealt with the role of violence and the Supreme Court in bringing about the end of Reconstruction in his last lecture, Professor Blight now turns to the role of national electoral politics, focusing in particular on the off-year…
Lecture 25 - The "End" of Reconstruction: Disputed Election of 1876, and the "Compromise of 1877"

August 25, 2017

This lecture focuses on the role of white southern terrorist violence in brining about the end of Reconstruction. Professor Blight begins with an account the Colfax Massacre. Colfax, Louisiana was the sight of the largest mass murder in…
Lecture 24 - Retreat from Reconstruction: The Grant Era and Paths to "Southern Redemption"

August 25, 2017

This lecture opens with a discussion of the myriad moments at which historians have declared an "end" to Reconstruction, before shifting to the myth and reality of "Carpetbag rule" in the Reconstruction South. Popularized by Lost Cause…
Lecture 23 - Black Reconstruction in the South: The Freedpeople and the Economics of Land and Labor

August 25, 2017

Professor Blight begins this lecture in Washington, where the passage of the first Reconstruction Act by Congressional Republicans radically altered the direction of Reconstruction. The Act invalidated the reconstituted Southern…

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Lecture 22 - Constitutional Crisis and Impeachment of a President

August 25, 2017

Professor Blight continues his discussion of the political history of Reconstruction. The central figure in the early phase of Reconstruction was President Andrew Johnson. Under Johnson's stewardship, southern whites held constitutional…
Lecture 21 - Andrew Johnson and the Radicals: A Contest over the Meaning of Reconstruction

August 25, 2017

In this lecture, Professor Blight begins his engagement with Reconstruction. Reconstruction, Blight suggests, might best be understood as an extended referendum on the meaning of the Civil War. Even before the war's end, various…
Lecture 20 - Wartime Reconstruction: Imagining the Aftermath and a Second American Republic

August 25, 2017

This lecture begins with a central, if often overlooked, turning point in the Civil War--the re-election of Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Although the concerted efforts of northern Peace Democrats and a palpable war weariness among the…
Lecture 19 - To Appomattox and Beyond: The End of the War and a Search for Meanings

August 25, 2017

Professor Blight uses Herman Melville's poem "On the Slain Collegians" to introduce the horrifying slaughter of 1864. The architect of the strategy that would eventually lead to Union victory, but at a staggering human cost, was Ulysses S…
Lecture 18 - "War So Terrible": Why the Union Won and the Confederacy Lost at Home and Abroad

August 25, 2017

This lecture probes the reasons for confederate defeat and union victory. Professor Blight begins with an elucidation of the loss-of-will thesis, which suggests that it was a lack of conviction on the home front that assured confederate…
Lecture 17 - Homefronts and Battlefronts: "Hard War" and the Social Impact of the Civil War

August 22, 2017

Professor Blight begins his lecture with a description of the sea change in Civil War scholarship heralded by the Social History revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with a focus on the experience of the common solider, women, and…
Lecture 16 - Days of Jubilee: The Meanings of Emancipation and Total War

August 22, 2017

This lecture focuses on the process of emancipation after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. The Proclamation, Professor Blight suggests, had four immediate effects: it made the Union army an army of…

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About the show

Professor David Blight. Open Yale Courses. The causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War, from the 1840s to 1877. License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA