Gregory P. Downs – författare

How Reconstruction’s complicated and contradictory legacy continues to inform America’s understanding of itselfHistorians Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur take readers on a tour across the American South to explore how Reconstruction is the story of both the “Second Founding” of the United States and the country as it is today.To highlight the significance of the nation’s progress toward making good on the promises of the revolutionary and founding eras, Downs and Masur recount stories that clarify the meanings of this dramatic but often confusing period. They reject the conventional view that Reconstruction ended in 1877, showing how the Civil War and the abolition of slavery created dynamics that led to many of today’s contentious political questions. They consider nine sites transformed by Reconstruction, where people continue to battle over the period’s legacies, including:• Green-Meldrim House in Savannah, where General William T. Sherman was headquartered and met with local Black leaders• First African Church in Richmond, a center for Black politics and community-building• Colfax Courthouse in Louisiana, site of the massacre of sixty Black men• Beaufort Naval Hospital in South Carolina, established to treat formerly enslaved peopleBy focusing on locations, Downs and Masur allow readers to see what happened and how the era’s struggles over rights and power continue to shape the country, showing decisively why Reconstruction matters.

“Original and revelatory.”—David Blight, author of Frederick DouglassAvery O. Craven Award FinalistA Civil War Memory/Civil War Monitor Best Book of the YearIn April 1865, Robert E. Lee wrote to Ulysses S. Grant asking for peace. Peace was beyond his authority to negotiate, Grant replied, but surrender terms he would discuss. The distinction proved prophetic.After Appomattox reveals that the Civil War did not end with Confederate capitulation in 1865. Instead, a second phase of the war began which lasted until 1871—not the project euphemistically called Reconstruction, but a state of genuine belligerence whose mission was to shape the peace. Using its war powers, the U.S. Army oversaw an ambitious occupation, stationing tens of thousands of troops in outposts across the defeated South. This groundbreaking history shows that the purpose of the occupation was to crush slavery in the face of fierce and violent resistance, but there were limits to its effectiveness: the occupying army never really managed to remake the South.“The United States Army has been far too neglected as a player—a force—in the history of Reconstruction… Downs wants his work to speak to the present, and indeed it should.”—David W. Blight, The Atlantic“Striking… Downs chronicles…a military occupation that was indispensable to the uprooting of slavery.”—Boston Globe“Downs makes the case that the final end to slavery, and the establishment of basic civil and voting rights for all Americans, was ‘born in the face of bayonets.’ …A remarkable, necessary book.”—Slate