PDF The End of the Urban Ancient Regime in England by Frederic Moret in History

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A brilliant evocation of the post-Civil War era by the acclaimed author of Patriots and Union 1812. After Lincoln tells the story of the Reconstruction; which set back black Americans and isolated the South for a century.With Lincoln’s assassination; his “team of rivals;” in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s phrase; was left adrift. President Andrew Johnson; a former slave owner from Tennessee; was challenged by Northern Congressmen; Radical Republicans led by Thaddeus Stephens and Charles Sumner; who wanted to punish the defeated South. When Johnson’s policies placated the rebels at the expense of the black freed men; radicals in the House impeached him for trying to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Johnson was saved from removal by one vote in the Senate trial; presided over by Salmon Chase. Even William Seward; Lincoln’s closest ally in his cabinet; seemed to waver. By the 1868 election; united Republicans nominated Ulysses Grant; Lincoln's winning Union general. The night of his victory; Grant lamented to his wife; “I’m afraid I’m elected.” His attempts to reconcile Southerners with the Union and to quash the rising Ku Klux Klan were undercut by post-war greed and corruption during his two terms. Reconstruction died unofficially in 1887 when Republican Rutherford Hayes joined with the Democrats in a deal that removed the last federal troops from South Carolina and Louisiana. In 1964; President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill with protections first proposed in 1872 by the Radical Senator from Massachusetts; Charles Sumner.