Week 15 · Readings & resources

Week 15 — Readings & Resources

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 15 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 65–87 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text. Several items describe murder, arson, and terror against Black Americans plainly; take them at your own pace.

Pick-one quick path (16–21 min total)

① President versus Congress, and the impeachment

Chapter 15, Section “Follow Congress's turn: Congressional Reconstruction and the impeachment” · Session 1, Segment 2, “President versus Congress” · Remember: Johnson's lenient readmission and the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 were two opposed policies, and the fight ended in an impeachment trial.

Impeachment Trial of President Andrew Johnson, 1868 — U.S. Senate — the Senate's own history of the case. Read the brief history first: it says Johnson called for a lenient policy that pardoned former Confederate leaders, vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau bill in 1866, and broke with the Republicans in Congress. Then find the vote: 35 senators for conviction and 19 against, one vote short of two-thirds, the tally Chapter 15 checks by arithmetic. The chronology, the eleven articles, and the lists of managers and lawyers are optional. It shows how the Senate tells its own trial; it does not show what freedpeople thought of the fight. (reading, 10–15 min)
New Acquisition: Document Signed by President Andrew Johnson Related to the 14th Amendment — Library of Congress — a curator of the Law Library's rare books explains a paper Johnson signed in 1868 that let the Secretary of State put the national seal on a proclamation that North Carolina and Florida had ratified the 14th Amendment. Listen for his point that Johnson opposed the amendment and called his own part ministerial, and for the list of laws Congress passed over Johnson's vetoes, the Reconstruction Act of 1867 among them. The curator reads part of the citizenship clause; the course quotes only the pinned fragment, so compare his words with it. (video, 3 min) (captions: creator)

② What freedpeople built

Chapter 15, Section “Recognize what freedpeople built” · Session 2, Segment 4, “Families, churches, schools, votes” · Remember: freedpeople built their own freedom, reuniting families and founding churches and schools, and Black men voted and held office.

Freedmen's Bureau Search Portal — National Museum of African American History and Culture — the museum's search page for the records of the Bureau Congress created in 1865. Read the two paragraphs above the search form and the section on data sources: the records hold the names of hundreds of thousands of people, and the museum warns that its index was made by volunteers and may carry typos, misspellings, and wrong dates. That warning is a sourcing lesson, because a searchable index is not the original paper. The search form is optional. It shows how the records can help a family find its past; it does not show, by itself, any one family's story. (reading, 5–8 min)
Hiram Revels: First African American Senator — U.S. Senate — the Senate Historical Office's short history of the first Black member of Congress, sworn in by the Senate in 1870. Read how the Black members of Mississippi's legislature, about a quarter of the body, agreed to back one of their own for the seat. Then read the challenge: three senators cited the Dred Scott decision to argue he had not been a citizen long enough, and his supporters answered that the 14th Amendment had overturned it. That is the corroboration Chapter 15 runs on the citizenship fragment, played out in the Senate itself. Use this example while completing the Week-15 module overview. The quotations on the page are the Senate's, not pinned, so paraphrase them. It shows how one officeholder's seat tested the new amendments; it does not show every Black officeholder's experience. (reading, 8–12 min)
Reconstruction and Its Aftermath: The African American Odyssey — Library of Congress — an exhibit section built from the library's own prints and papers. Read the opening paragraphs, then the items on teaching the newly freed, the South Carolina legislature, and the Black church. Notice one thing a close reader catches: the page gives a later day in 1870 for the 15th Amendment's ratification than the National Archives does; the course uses the National Archives' date, and both agree on the year. Items that run past 1877, such as the 1890 map, are optional. It shows what the library's collections document about freedpeople's schools, votes, and churches; it does not show every community's experience. (reading, 15–20 min)
Freedmen's Bureau: Celebrate Black History — The Henry Ford — a museum's short look at objects from the years after the war: a freedmen's school, labor contracts that set work and pay, and small pieces of paper currency, which the video calls symbols of being paid in cash for the first time. It says Congress closed the Bureau in 1872. The narrator quotes the Declaration and the Bureau's commissioner; those spoken lines are the video's, and the course quotes only its pinned fragments. (video, 2 min) (captions: automatic)
The First Vote - Black U.S. Army Soldier: Reconstruction 360 — South Carolina ETV — a one-minute clip from a public-television series set at a polling place in Virginia in 1867. Listen for the case Black soldiers and their allies made: men who fought for the Union had earned the vote. The registration and voting totals it gives are the video's own; the course says the scale in words and keys none of them. (video, 1 min) (captions: creator)
Robert Smalls: Hero of the Planter — NBC News Learn — a three-minute documentary short, told with period images, that calls Smalls a hero of the Civil War and a symbol of Black aspirations after it. It says that in 1862 he took the Confederate ship Planter and its military cargo and delivered them to Union forces, that northern newspapers hailed him as a hero, and that he joined the Union Navy and was soon commanding the Planter. After the war, it says, he helped draft a new state constitution and was elected to Congress, where he served eight years. A second speaker explains that South Carolina was a former Confederate state where Black residents outnumbered white ones, so Black voters could turn their numbers into political power, and that opponents answered by charging Smalls with corruption in 1877, one way of driving Black officeholders from office. The narrator says "slave" and "ex-slaves" where the course says enslaved people, and the account of his pardon goes past 1877, beyond this course. It shows one man's path from enslavement to office and the backlash against it; it does not show what most freedpeople's lives were like. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)

③ Terror, retreat, and the end of Reconstruction

Chapter 15, Section “Name the violence: the backlash against Black citizenship” · Session 2, Segment 5, “Terror and retreat” · Remember: the violence was a campaign against Black voters, officeholders, schools, and churches, and Reconstruction ended amid it in 1877.

The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan — GPB Education — a public broadcaster's six-minute account of the Klan in Georgia: how it formed in Tennessee, turned into a political and terrorist organization, burned Black schools and churches, attacked families, and surrounded polling places with armed men. Listen for how Black Georgians rebuilt schools and churches, and for the federal laws that broke up the first Klan. The founding year and the counts it gives are the video's; the closing minutes on a later Klan run past 1877. (video, 6 min) (captions: creator)
Violence and Hatred - Let Us Have Peace: Reconstruction 360 — South Carolina ETV — a two-minute clip from the same public-television series, set after the massacre in Memphis in 1866. Listen for the Enforcement Acts of the early 1870s, the federal prosecutions of Klansmen, and the narrator's point that keeping troops in the South grew unpopular with Republican officials. This builds on Week 12's reading of Dred Scott, because the violence aimed to keep from Black Americans the citizenship the Court had denied. Its last half minute runs into the decades after 1877, and the figures it gives there are the video's. (video, 2 min) (captions: creator)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights — National Archives — the National Archives' page for the week's workshop document. Start with the short history at the top for the dates Congress passed it and the states ratified it, then use your browser's find tool to reach both pinned fragments. The paragraphs on how later courts read the amendment are optional. (reading, 10–15 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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