let me introduce our panel as i'm going to do so in

alphabetical order. so it probably will not relate to to what the order in which they speak. so first, jake jake friefeld is the new director of center for lincoln studies at the university of illinois springfield. earlier, he was illinois and midwest studies research historian at the abraham lincoln presidential library and museum, and he is the latest addition, a contingent of of springfield young scholars who have begun coming to forum. and we're delighted that they here and that they're participating. his recent book is first migrants how homesteaders quest for land and freedom heralded america's great migration. who was here for the second time is the director of research and interpretation at the abraham presidential library and museum in springfield for years he

taught history. the university of arkansas. he's the author of manual mental. oscar dunn and his radical fight in reconstruction louisiana. and that was published. in 2021. john c is a professor of history at stonehill college. he's the author of lincoln and reconstruction, which came out in 2013 for the cq press. concise lincoln series, which has just won the lincoln forum's wendy allen for its accomplishment in so many memorable brief lincoln volumes over the. edited, i should say, just a little advertisement by john's amazing wife sylvia rodrigue. his latest book is freedom's crescent the civil war and the destruction of slavery in the lower mississippi valley. so now, jake bryan and john,

please take away. thank you, harold. thank you, everybody, for being here. it's a great honor to be able to speak at this form in the organization. this panel, with my two esteemed colleagues. i will be speaking for about 5 minutes to try to give an overall sense of what i'm doing in this book, even though it's 500 pages. so i guess that's about hundred pages per minute is i have. so i'll just give you an overview and this way that will lead to a general conversation on this topic. okay. as the subtitle suggests it indicates, it's the civil war and the destruction of slavery in the lower mississippi valley. and so in essence, what this book is, it's study of emancipation and the abolition of slavery in the mississippi valley. and what i mean by that are the four states from this area that seceded and joined the confederacy. so arkansas, tennessee, louisiana and mississippi. it does take into account the

border states of missouri and kentucky as necessary in order to understand what's going on in area. but they're not essential to the story. i should also note that i'm focusing on plantation and slavery areas of this region. and i'm taking you know, tennessee is a is a weirdly configured state. right. but it's west tennessee that's really part of the of the plantation slavery society, though. it is to look at the state level developments. okay. and so what i'm trying to do in this book is to bring into a coherent narrative the military story, the major political developments, particularly in louisiana, tennessee and arkansas. there's never really a unionist movement per say in mississippi and then also in washington, d.c., and with the national. and then it's also incorporate the great work that that has been done on basically the on the ground destruction of slavery by the slaves

themselves. and which i've also contributed in part of in my own work to this, to this scholarly revolution. so it's an attempt to pull all of this together into a single on this vitally important region. and i don't think this audience needs to be reminded of the importance of the mississippi river. right. and this area to american and to the the confederacy, the outcome of the civil war. and i would suggest to the outcome of the destruction of slavery there indeed a vast literature on all aspects of this area of military wartime, the destruction of slavery. and so but this is the first book really to pull all of this together. there's no other single book that looks at this vitally important geopolitical area as as an entity. so that's you an overall description. now, in a way, there's two central themes in so far as my book has an argument and i'll try be as brief as possible with those. of all this area includes what i would call all five dimensions

of wartime emancipation and abolition. and i'm going to run through them very quickly. okay. so you don't have to necessarily try to follow, but first, firstly, we have what we would limited military emancipation before emancipation proclamation by union troops as they gained territory. so that's under the sec, the the confiscation and various other measures. and this was supposed to make, for instance, distinguish between loyal and disloyal slaveholders. okay. secondly, we have what we would call universal military emancipation under the emancipation proclamation. now, when i say universal, i don't mean everywhere the united states. i mean everywhere designated areas, states and thereof. right. but this made no distinction between loyal and disloyal slaveholders. right. and so that's the second part or the second dimension. thirdly, we have from the proclamation, as we know, all of tennessee is excluded the proclamation. and also louisiana, new orleans and the surrounding. and this is a concession to wartime unionists in those areas

were organizing loyal governments. fourthly we have state level abolition arkansas in early 1860 for the first state to do so. louisiana later on in 1864. and then tennessee in early 1865. under wartime reconstruction by unionists. right. so we have state level abolition and fifthly, we have federal abolition under under civilian authority. and this happens under andrew johnson's reconstruct asian program. and then, of course, the 15th amendment, which is ratified in december of 1865. and i should that my book is basically going from lincoln's election in november of 1860. so for almost exactly years later. and so it ends with ratification of the of the 13th amendment in 1865. the other second thing that i'm trying to do in this book is, is to something of a revision. and here have to try to be brief. and i promise i'll try to offer something of a revision in on the standard story of how the

war from the north becomes a war to preserve the union to, a war for freedom. right. and we all know this, all familiar with this. and it's been invoked many times in the sessions that we've had in the last of days. but let me suggest here that, you know, for all of that, there's no question that the emancipation proclamation was one of the truly transformative moments, not just in the civil war, but in all of american history. but i think historians, justifiably so focus on the emancipation proclamation, the process by which lincoln came to the proclamation, and all of the factors are involved there. but to the point where where the abolition abolition almost an afterthought, and i think some historians sometimes even use that term that almost logistics. but if you think it it took a year and a half to get to the emancipation proclamation but then it takes three years to get from the proclamation and to the final ratification of of the of the amendment. and many people said, you know, slavery is dead after the proclamation is issued, assuming

northern military victory. slavery is dead. many people said that at the time. many historian is. repeat it. but what i found is that many people at the time were also vitally aware of the limitations of the proclamation. we know that that's a familiar story. right. but here's the problem. it's how were you to get the states back in, right. with without while ensuring slavery is is going to abolished right. to ensure that the seceded states come back to the union with free state. now, let's imagine for a moment there's no 13th amendment. now we can do that right because that was the reality before the 13th amendment. there was no 13th amendment. but we offer we also assume that the 13th amendment was part of the plan. all even before the war. and so we draw a straight line from the emancipation proclamation to 13th amendment. but no, he was thinking in terms of a federal abolition, an amendment that would be imposed upon the states against their will, even abolitionists before the war. always that slavery would be

would be abolished by the states. that was that was standard 1 to 1 thinking of slavery and the union and the constitution. were exceptions. but even radical even the the abolitionist argued that it would be the states that would have that would abolish slavery not the national government. and this mentality exists into the war. and for the first few first couple of years during the war right and the amendment is not introduced into congress until december of 1863. and then, as we know, even that's a very complicated story and many people did not believe that this was going to work out. so so that like that's the right. how do you get the seceded states into the union ensuring the abolition of slavery without amendment? now, the amendment does eventually become part of the equation. but i was. but originally it was thought to be part of of of of a reconstruction bill, reconstruction legislation, which would spell out the mechanisms by which the seceded states would come back into the union. so i'm suggesting it's not simply a straight line.

again, the emancipation proclamation, to the to the abolition of slavery and then to complicated even further in louisiana tennessee an, arkansas, you also have pro slavery unionists who are trying to organize loyal governments while preserving slavery. and so there's a contest, particularly in louisiana and tennessee, between free and pro-slavery unionists. right. and so lincoln's got to figure out how to work this problem out. the short is you have to read my book to see to see how this actually happens. right. and we can talk about that a little bit more in the q&a. but that's the question that i'm dealing with in this book. in addition, looking at the complexities of this in this particular region, it's also true addressed this larger question how we get from military emancipation to constitutional abolition. one final note i'll note before ending. i'm not in any way trying to suggest, particularly with this crowd, that the emancipation proclamation is not important or

the black contribution there. i've been part of this this this historiographical revolution, and i'm the last who would make that argument? but what i'm trying to suggest here is maybe an a more realistic understanding of the limitations of the on the ground process of emancipation that we in a way, in order to really be complete the destruction of slavery had to be transmuted through the formal institutional of government. right and ultimately it was that as well as the actions of the slaves is real politics and the political process and institutions that were essential to the ending of slavery. so my my story is really just kind of like it and it ends at the beginning in terms of reconstruct. right. because i'm ending with the ending of slavery 65 and then i'm going to pass mic over to my esteemed colleague brian mitchell who's going to speak a little bit more about the reconstruction period per se. good afternoon.

my name is brian mitchell and i'm the author of monumental oscar and this radical fight and reconstruct in louisiana. i'm going to ask you guys to raise your hands if you've ever heard of james done. okay. okay. most of you didn't raise your hands like me. most of you grew in the shadow of the los cause i'm. a native of new orleans, louisiana. and being in the shadow of the lost cause means quite literally. i've immersed in new orleans history and immersed in the past since the day i was born. you can go very few steps before you tumble into monument and most of those monuments were dedicate it to confederate or worse still, white supremacist. i saw nothing that resembled myself in the city's fabric.

i saw a new monument to black. i saw a new monument to even slaves. even though new orleans had been one of the nation's largest slave markets in 1976, i returned to my place of prayer at the city that i love and began going to second grade. every i would come home from second grade and i'd go to my great grandmother's house. she was born in 1895 and was the granddaughter of a white planter. my grandmother would tell me stories and these stories wrapped around reconstruction. her husband, a man by the name of emanuel dunn, had been the nephew of oscar, the great nephew of oscar. james and and i had heard

nothing of this in school at all. and in fact, in 1976, when i returned, it was the bicentennial year. very happily i went to my second grade class and we were studying the internal workings of state government. the teacher asked, if anyone could recall the names of any governors, the lieutenant governors beside the governor that was sitting at the time. i proudly raised my hand shaking back and forth to second graders. do and when i was called upon and i declared oscar james dunn been our nation's first lieutenant governor, our nation's first black lieutenant governor, and our nation's first black governor. the teacher, she'd never heard of him. and in fact, she once i told her that he was african-american, that that could not have been

true. i replied that by saying, no, you're wrong. in fact, there have been three of them. i was promptly sent to the principal's office. i went home to my great grandmother in tears. why did you lie to me? she. why didn't you tell that? dunn was all made up? and she replied, it's not made up. it's just that he's forgotten. it's at that point, the historian in me was born. it's in instant. and that. that i came to be. and i searching. monumental. initially he was my dissertation. and i had a fantastic i had an array of fantastic professors. none more important than. a man by the name of raphael

kazimir. he's emeritus now at the of new orleans. and one of the things that's really important between about our connection, he was the very first african-american male that i ever had as a teacher ever in my life until my freshman year of college. he made such an impression upon me, and he was the first person that knew anything about donne. so got through high school without ever hearing dunn, without ever hearing, without ever hearing salazar. antoine all of that history just forgotten. and louisiana schools. when i began working on my dissertation, he discouraged me. he said, there's not a lot there, bryan. i don't know if you'll be able to pull a dissertation together.

there are only three existing articles on him, and i believe that the longest of which was only 20 pages. but i was dedicated this cause and i went out pursuing time, which meant that i had to look at archives and it was all primary research. but i was able to reconstruct time finding things dissolving mess and elevating, done to the place where i believe he rightfully belongs for african-americans donne is very much like abraham lincoln. he starts off enslaved an, educated. he gets the opportunity through his stepfather a free black who had migrated from petersburg, virginia to the city of new orleans, working as a stage carpenter for the great impresario james henry caldwell, the man who would bring american

theater to, new orleans and through james dunn that he is elevated and becomes. he remembers and honors james harden adopting his middle and last so he had had just the name oscar when he was enslaved but he becomes oscar james dunn in tribute to this man who was responsible for his freedom. he rises, becomes a plaster, then becoming the grand mason. so he becomes a free mason in the city of new orleans. and he will become the appointed black official in the nation. a of people ask a lot of people who know the dissertation as why didn't you do a traditional book. why did you do a graphic history? and this is the first reconstruction graphic history

that was done. i quite late into writing my dissertation that my university has a dashboard and this computer dashboard tells you where your book is being downloaded. so there's a big map and you can actually see the download and. they're just dots on a map. but one day i was sitting in my office and, i received a phone call. the phone call was from a middle school student outside of cleveland and. he was on the phone with his father and he said, i'd like to thank you. i'd like to thank you for writing this dissertation. and i'm like why are you reading a dissertation in middle school? and you never believe that students are actually reading your stuff. so you quiz them. and what did you like about the book? who were your favorite characters? who did hate? and he sat there for an hour with, his father, and told me

all about the book. i was so taken aback by this that i asked him. i said, how can i get other students your age engage aged in history? and he said, well, you know, your book is so relevant to now with the polarization that i'm seeing in the nation things that are going on. the threats of violence. he's like, it's really right now and it's his suggestion that i do it as a graphic novel is why came out as a graphic novel. i'm sure some point. yes. so later additional will out in and it will be an full fledge book for academy. but i thought it was to write for children who are like me that didn't see themselves in the books that they were being given at school. they know the history of

reconstruction they didn't know the men who were there. so. so i'd like with that, i'd like to pass on the mic to jacob friefeld. thank john. thank you, brian. i'm going to time myself or else you'll be going to dinner after i'm done. as harold said. my book is first migrant's with the wonderful rick edwards. our subtitle, which you tried to make longer. we weren't able to. how black homesteaders quest for land and freedom. heralded america's great migration. i think the best for me to describe the book is to sort of start at the beginning with just over 300 black kentuckians in a crowded train station in lexington. they were looking to board a train for the promise. they a lot of them holding, their children, all of their worldly possessions. some had livestock in tow. different railroad lines shouting out to them, trying to get them to ride on their line, lowering their prices after

waiting for hours. their train. finally left. they had to switched trains. several times along the journey, unloading goods, reloading them on to the new train at each stop. all of this to get to their promised land, kansas. now that should spark a couple questions for your family. why? why are these 300 folks going to kansas? well, there are push and pull factors going on here. right. these folks these folks experienced what john was talking about they experienced the hard work of emancipation the excitement of the jubilee after emancipation, promise of reconstruction by 1877. a lot of that had turned to ashen anguish and. the biggest frustration or one of the largest frustrations was the failure of land reform that the million acres that had been confiscated from, confederate traitors, had been given back to them by lincoln's worst

decision. andrew johnson. and so land reform failed in the south. and that's a part of the push factor and the pull factor is the homestead act, which lincoln signed 1862, which offered americans and, immigrants who maintain that they would become citizens of 160 acres of land if they stayed on it for five years or ahead of a household and made improvements on the land and for those that don't think in acres, that's like 120 nfl football fields of land for free. the government was away and that is the pull factor. these folks in this kentucky train station said, well, if we can't get land out here, we're going to go west. and it's not just land. it's the ability to create a community where you what you say

goes right without the unremitting violence and authority of white southerners. and so they go to kansas when arrive they were that there'd be already a town built for them. there was no town. the first group that gets there, they start building sod houses where they were told there's plenty of timber, which if you've ever driven through kansas and these folks are coming from kentucky right there, kansas, you know there's not a bunch of timber. and one of my favorite stories is willie on a hickman. she's on the group that goes in nicodemus. and she hadn't been feeling well on the trip. she's in a wagon because the train station is still 20 miles off from nicodemus and she starts hearing her husband and the other men whipping and celebrating and she said, well, what's going on? well, there's nicodemus and she remembers and she says, i looked with all the eyes i had and said, where is nicodemus? and they were pointing to sod

homes. so they're half dug in the hills with sod bricks and with smoke out of chimneys. and they said there is nicodemus. and she said she wept but they stayed. and nicodemus ends up becoming the largest black homesteader site in the great plains with over 13,000 acres of land claimed. but they're not the only ones they're joined by. tens of thousands more black americans who found places like empire, wyoming. black them, new mexico. i listen to the names of these places. they they they're about big business. they're like a kingdom of black people. black out of new mexico, empire, wyoming. dinwiddie nebraska might not that impressive until you hear they change the name later to audacious audacious this is the book tells the story these tens of thousands of people who are both a prelude to the great migration that happens when the lucrative action is in american cities when you can go to and get wage in northern cities here

it's those 120 football fields of land you're going to get for free from the government. it also unites to parts of the lincoln legacy that legacy of emancipation emancipation proclamation, which went into effect january 1863 and free land policy, the homestead act, which went into effect january one, 1863. part of that revolution of the 37th congress in abraham lincoln and also changes the way we think about western settlement and who settled the great plains in this country. and i think it grew out not exactly the same as bryan and grew out though of of my first book on homesteading and the homestead national park contact. i mean said you know the story we tell the park about homestead is a pretty white story and we know that are folks who are not white that homesteaded or were immigrants from the norwegian and could you look into that and

it's like yes and and we thought was oh, this is going to be an article. and then, oh, no, there are tens of thousands of folks in the plains alone. this doesn't even consider the western part of the united states, but i think i can stop there. and then we can have a discussion or open it up to questions. if there are questions already, we can bring the microphone out. oh, there's already question. all right. we were good reserves. 30 minutes for questions. i think we. have a very practical question. i think professor roderick may came closest to it. so i'm a slave, a plantation, like you say, in western tennessee. suddenly we get the the owner is gone. they've they fled or whatever

the overseer is gone. here we are, 100, 200 slaves. how how do we live? where is the food coming from? there's no cash. we're in a cashless. we never had any money. we're in a cash society. the freedmen's bureau hasn't been created yet. there's no union forces around. are we going to starve to death? what happened? how did the people. well, you know, i mean, that's i don't want to sound like i'm ducking the question but i mean, your your question speaks to the chaos of emancipation. the one thing i would emphasize, though, that the certainly the the enslaved had their own resources. they knew they knew how a plantation operated. they they could do that was necessary to do. and there were some instances in which the slave holders did skedaddle and. they basically took over and they were growing they weren't growing food crops. i'm sorry, were they growing

crops in addition to the you know, in a way, yes. but not to say that they would completely reject crops either. but we're getting way, way ahead of the story mean because i mean, this will take months and years to play itself out. the union army will eventually show. and usually what's happened is they're liberated with the arrival of the union army and. then then we have the whole problem of military sponsored free labor, right where the union officials are basically in charge of this new labor system, and they're trying to institute a new labor system. and as you can imagine, it's an incredibly chaotic i should note, this is what this situation is part of this historiographical revolution that this book just basically builds upon. this stuff has been been done by scholars the last 40, 50 years and then even 100 years. dubois and black scholars were attending to this so that aspect of it in my in my book is not new. that's what i'm incorporating the stuff that we already, you

know, in that we already know. but it was certainly a chaotic process and everybody has all different kinds of assumptions about what this new system will look like, even if there is going be a new system. and that was not necessarily a done deal because, of course, the north had to win the war and even winning the war was not necessarily going to you settle things that that's the best answer that i could give to a very complicated question. thank you. thank you. so i guess this is for brian. and i was really moved by what you said your god bless your grandma mother quite great grandmother what what quite a person and you know we all had teachers who had huge influences on our lives growing up and i think what you're describing is

a lack of role models who looked like you can do you know whether the situation has improved for children growing up in the south today. i would like to say it has, but unfortunately we of recent we've taken a huge step backwards. this identification of everything so-called crt the attack on ethnic the attack on difficult histories or hard histories that is really taking its toll in the south where many states, particularly southern states, maintain immunities against all sorts of lawsuits. parents are encouraged that in many of these states to

personally sue teachers who are to teaching who are teaching these narratives that are really, really important. imagine being in a majority minority school, public school. and being told that you can't incorporate the histories of the people that you are teaching to in their instruction. imagine the impact that has on those children if they never hear a positive word about anyone who look like them. the narrative that i was was that african-americans came over as slaves. nobody really mean to them. they just treated them like children and. then all of a sudden, because of the benevolence they let them go one day.

it made no sense to me in second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade. made no sense. our children aren't stupid. they understand vacuums. i have students that come to me when i, a professor from the suburbs, say, why do all the black people live in these? and why are they living into decaying cause of cities? why don't they all pick up and move out without knowing the histories of redlining without knowing the histories of slum clearance? so can we accurately depict our nation to our children if we're under willing to take that hard look at ourselves and the role that we played in making the landscape of the united states. so one of the things that i'd love to do and i'm hoping and some point in a future year to do many, many more graphic histories that tackle difficult

topics so children can understand what has happening in the united states. how did you end up in a racially concentrated area of, poverty that didn't happen. exit entirely to anyone. what happened? i write a lot about the land dispossession in arkansas. i was the first and only state to kick out its entire free black population. and there's never been a book written on it. i spent a year tracking a thousand people who were kicked out to figure out where they went. and i'm to work on a text now. but how do you tell that story? why hasn't it already been told? it is a fantastic story. how do you kick out a whole state's worth of people and and those scholars do study african-americans will really that those people were kicked out were mainly women and they were mainly women for one specific reason because you

could free your wife or you could free your daughter and that would ensure that every child that was born from that woman would be free. so how do you tell this narrative? and these are why we really have to as academics, start looking at what's being taught in in education, not just being taught within the academy. the information we're passing on to each other. but but what are we doing for the children. just had something onto that. one of the most amazing things to me is when bryan, i cross-reference the star databases of folks who were kicked out of arkansas with black homesteaders like there's going to be the start of a great project right we're going have several people, no matches, i still can't believe it. it's just a quick question. who were the chief of reconstruction, planning or theory before the emancipation

proclamation? i know lincoln was talking about, but somebody had to be thinking or were they just really acting out? what do i know this will be very, very brief. you know, the question of quote unquote, reconstruction goes to the secession crisis, really. i mean, because it's about reunite the union. one of the themes of my book is how we go from what what i would call state restoration, a very limited notion, getting the states back with real fundamental changes. and that's thinking, lincoln's thinking. and most in congress and probably most people in the north, how we get from that to reconstruction is part of the story. but every session of congress, just about every session of tried to deal and enact some kind of reconstruction legislation write a bill that would put that would dictate how the states would come back all of the practical that would have to be dealt with even aside from

the question of slavery the practical issues that would have to be dealt with. right. because as we know, the conundrum of reconstruction is the states never left because they can't leave, but they do in reality left, right. so you have to have some kind of some kind of legislation to say what's who's going to be in charge, who's going to be allowed to vote? what are we going to do with the confederate debts, etc., etc.? so and they the only time they do that is, of course, with the famous wade davis bill. and they were getting into deeply in the weeds. and i'm not going go any further. but the one bill in 1864 and lincoln pocket vetoes that and i could about that for an hour because it really does raise interesting issues the question of reconstruction had been around from very beginning and every session of congress to deal with it. but infighting republicans themselves as to what this is going to look like. the democrats are able to exploit in congress are able to exploit the divisions amongst republicans they're never able to do and think about this there's no reconstruction bill passed until radical reconstruction in 1867. that's when settlement to the

war two years later. right and that's but that i end here that's what we're getting into here and i've done my own work on you on postwar reconstruction. so i felt like i was of, you know, going back to the the pre-history of the previous work that i've done that was a longer question answer than i had to provide. but did you want to speak to it or. yes, we'd have a couple. okay. and i was going to say that the reconstruction it depends on what you mean by reconstruction and what he was saying. 1866 is a pivotal year. 1866, there will be two massive riots that will take place. they're actually but people like to call violence. that was by whites riots and not massacres. the first is in memphis and the second it takes place in the city. new orleans. they were organized, involved, hundreds of white perpetrators.

many of the perpetrators did so with the guidance of elected officials. many included police officers and. many were former confederates. and this was a cause for alarm. could we go back? could the civil war restart? and that's when the decision really made that. we really have to take firm control of all of these states, these former states replace their leadership with people who are loyal to, the republican cause and under that climate that done becomes an appointed official first to the city council as a member of the junior council, he is one of two african-american men that are selected for that post. but this is happening throughout south at the same time, just one

very quick follow, one very quick follow up. the epilog of my book, just the epilog. i deal with the new orleans and memphis and how perfect is it in a way that you know the two cities at either end of the lower mississippi are so crucial to the you know to to reconstruction the proximate cause of the riot in may was black soldiers and the proximate cause in new was black suffrage. the two most explosive issues that face country that the black soldiers who were serving the army of occupation. and the question black suffrage. right so it's it's no accident. it's no coincidence that these were the two issues that set off this racial violence in these two cities in. this, you know, in in the lower mississippi valley. but i know we have a question you've been waiting for a while, man. good afternoon. i want to go back to the second grade. doctor and ask, did your teacher or the principal ever, could you flip the script on them day?

and answering that question, did they ever receive their education? did they ever accept any valid of what you said coming from your great grandmother? is personal oral history? you know, i get that question a lot. they're like, hey, did you see your second grade teacher first? i wouldn't her. and then she maybe 60 at the time. so oh i i doubt that she'd be alive. i'd love that if she were and she could say look it wasn't my fault i was just regurgitating what i'd taught in my entire life. and then we could have a broader discussion of the continuity of dunning scholars and law schools narrative. but no, i haven't. in fact, i haven't even been invited back to the school that i was. and i always prominently talk about the school and and pitch

for them, but i haven't ever been invited back to one of the things that's really fun is i do visit classrooms around the country most of the time, zoom and, the publisher created, a foundation which helps provide copies of the book to schools who can't afford to publish it to purchase the books themselves. i have a question about what happened after longstreet lost the battle in the center of new orleans. they had to send sheridan in. how did that occupy asian out? i mean, i think they they held the lid on for a while, but obviously the inevitable happened when. the troops pulled out. but how did the occupation transpire, if i may ask? well, there are a couple of things that we have to talk about and versus the election of

1872 and that lection is highly disputed, both parties maintain that they won. democrats maintain that they won in and the republicans that they run and instead one of them conceding all of them had their own offices and they may they were two separate governments in louisiana at the same time. so there was a governor jenner and and then a governor kellogg and both of them maintain that they were the rightful governor, the earliest sort of play out, violent play out of this reaction happened easter morning right before they were supposed to install the new government in grant parish. blacks got wind that the democrats were going to go and claim the county seat and they decide we're going go out in number and protect our county seat because we won. we were the majority in this

county. they were not prepared for. what happened? they there and there were hundreds of former confederates with of rifles and cannon and they get the county seat lay lay siege to the county seat. and when the blacks surrender, they're taken and they're executed as many as 150 african-americans died that day. and things would get worse from that point on. river there would be a similar massacre would take place. and the culminating war would take place in the city of new orleans. a couple of years later. and that culminated with 5000 former confederates now gathered the banner of the white league laying siege to the city of new orleans. and you're quite correct, they will take the city of new orleans and hold the city of new orleans.

and this is one of the effects that is one of the unknown effects of donne's death. donne was always a moderating factor. he had support of both the republican and democratic camps. he was seen as a moderate in that he didn't want blacks to join white institutions. he didn't want an integrated free black masons. he realized that was the source, their power. that was the place they organize. he said, can build anything they have. we don't nessus hourly need to join their clubs or go do theaters. we'll just build our own and you lose this moderating voice. everything devolves into violence violence. just a quick follow. i'm sorry to be hogging the microphone but the episode that brian talks about is known as the colfax massacre. of course, in april of 1873, the

colfax massacre. and there's been some very good books on the column, the facts massacre, and it is the single most violent episode, all of reconstruction in terms of the number black fatalities, we don't know the exact number, but it's 150 is probably a conservative estimate. i don't think it's i don't think it's any coincidence that the federal military red river campaign in the spring of 1864, led by nathaniel banks, is a disaster. it is a catastrophe in northwest louisiana. it can claim to be un vanquished during the civil war and i don't think it's any coincidence that this area that claims to be un vanquished winds up being one of the most violent places in the entire south during reconstruction. and that's saying a lot right the violence and reconstruct action so the evidence, the events that bryan is talking about are part of this larger this larger scenario, violence that's prevailing in louisiana, and particularly in in in northwestern louisiana. and this takes me back because a previous life, i started writing a book on 1872 election in

louisiana, but it's kind of unfinished business. so. well, sheridan came in and actually established martial law as, i recall, in new orleans, and then they had to hand it back, though they, basically had to give up and well, eventually everybody did. but i was wondering how that occupation went very short and that was it. i mean, but what what what that's the battle what is no comes to known as the battle to replace and then there's a monument, you know, to the great victory over you know, and the great victory white supremacy at the liberty place was liberty place demonstrated that the republicans could not even control new orleans, which was the capital and their home base without federal troops. and the north is not going to stomach federal indefinitely. so the writing clearly on the wall with liberty place. right that this is this is not to last much longer.

i'll follow up segway in federal ulysses grant the vote in the wake of emancipation and the the decision to stay as long as they did and when they pulled out it's like hell continue to break loose that didn't seem to be any stays of systems to assure any of social anything. so you take on grant after and emancipate. knowledge knowledge. okay. all right. yeah. you know, the traditional story has been that grant's record is bad on reconstruction, but ron chernow's book biography of grant that came out a few years ago, i don't think i he wasn't you know, he wasn't trying to make excuses for grant, but he i think he kind of rebuilt hated grant a little bit in. grant's commitment to black civil rights.

and i think he i think he's right you know in that grant really did take this seriously but but you know by the 1870s there is there there is so much against this, right. that even, you know, even grant is having trouble negotiating and grant had his problems. let's face. and i don't mean the alcoholics. i mean politically. right. he wasn't terribly astute in many respects. and so he did he did have his issues, you know, as president. but i think chernow, i think does a really good job of showing that grant. you know, he really did try to do right by him, by african-americans, but he was just overwhelmed and and he traces this back to war. the the transformation that grant during the war on on including black soldiers in the effort. so he sees that as part of grant's genuine and and so i think it is an interesting take on on grant himself because the again the traditional view was that grant was pretty much inept and his reconstruction was just a complete fiasco and a failure.

and it is it's as always, more complicated than that. in the spring 1869, dunn make a fateful trip and trip is important for a number of reasons. first, it's the first black political junket that ever happens, and it's followed by newspapers all over the country. it starts in new orleans and it starts at the great northern railroad. a lot of students ask me, well, what happened to pgti, you know, pierre, to tout gustav beauregard immediately following the war, king becomes the president, the great northern railroad. so dunn shows up and he wants buy a first class ticket and he wants to go up to the inaugurate to see ulysses grant. and he's allowed to buy a first class ticket, but he's told you can't, right? in a first class coach, you have to ride in the --, which meant

that you had to sit up. there were no sleeper cars. so this is the lieutenant governor of the state state. when he gets off in kentucky, he's not to go inside of an omnibus. he's traveling with another white republican senator. and by the name of lynch and, he's told you'll either have to ride at the top of the car with the driver and that was called the -- perch and or you can walk. so he hires his own carriage. by this point he's made a lot of money for himself hires his own carriage take them across the river and it's until he gets in ohio that he's allowed to have first class accommodations that he will make it to washington in d.c. and he had called ahead the night the lieutenant governor of louisiana would like to stay in the willard.

but when he arrived at the willard is very surprised at what they see this african man. so they tell him you welcome to sign the guestbook but you cannot stay in the hotel. grant will actually dunn and grant and dunn will develop a relationship and when grant goes when dunn goes on to battle the governor henry clay warmers for control of the republican party grant will side with dunn and the dunn faction. one of the most interesting and surprising of primary sources i found was a letter in ulysses says ulysses ss grant. grant's letterbox what was interesting about this is there was a letter with her actually talking about the potential for dunn to be a running if grant

could a second term later like if dunn can hold the blacks together potential for him to be a running for vice president of the united states and this is taking think about when this taking place it's hard to have a discussion today about a black running in the united states, but there this discussion and 70 so yes dunn ulysses grant support it dunn and he supported the dunn faction of the republican party the radical faction of the republican party in louisiana. one quick thing, warmth. governor and grant had a history because warmth had been in the military during the vicksburg crisis. he he he was kind of absent without leave. grant tried to have him cashiered which would have like ruined any postwar career dunn warmth goes to the white house and talks to lincoln. when lincoln used to have those audiences and gets reinstated.

so there is blood between warmth and grant and in warmth memoirs he hates grant you can you can tell. and so it just fits perfectly. yes. love reconstruction which. i'm not. we're here for you. that's great. i was going to say, since we're this is being recorded for posterity we probably have time for one more question that i don't want to speak with for all of our guys, but all happy to stick around and talk with more now when we hard stop at because i was told to do jake what happened to these black homesteading families how long did they last their. so most of these communities they last until about i mean, as you might expect the dustbowl great depression. and so a lot of the interpretation around these communities that existed was that they had failed like they went out and they didn't make it. i talked to a lot of descendants when writing this book of black homesteaders and their take is

completely different. like no, they were never these communities weren't meant to last. they were meant to get us out of the south. they meant to get us to where we can govern ourselves or could educate the next generation. and we knew there probably weren't going to be eligible marriage partners out in these sort of smaller communities. we're hundreds of football fields apart. and so we my parents knew that the next generation our great grandparents knew that the next generation probably wasn't going to stay out on the farm. they their to educate them to go elsewhere. and in that way they were successes so yeah, most of them do last and peak sort of a lot of them peak right before i mean a dry period and the dust bowl was like the final crash for most of them but yeah but i mean the descendants of the homesteaders go and have great careers in cities that might not been possible for them elsewhere. the one exception being sully county, south dakota. there's still folks, the

magruder family on land was homesteaded by their family. and right next to the book on my shelf at work, i have a gift from one of them, a gruters, a nail. one of the homes that was built on homesteaded land. and that's a treasure of mine. but now there are successful. maybe a way we don't think about success. i think we. i think we fit one more question and we got a few minutes. yeah, yeah. see your hand down here. you know? hey, gentlemen. thank you so much. i'm a public schoolteacher, thankfully, in the great state of new jersey, next door. how has the book been received, mr. as far as a graphic novel, i recently bought a graphic novel for the first time and it's very different from most of the books i have myself, but i could see how it could be accessible. so i it came out a couple of

years ago, so i'm just to know how it was received in the academic feel. it was well-received. i think we're up about nine book awards. so i did very, very well. a lot of them national awards. the one i'm most proud of is the louisiana award, which is my hometown, and that's a huge award. their for for books. but it's been more influential then at it sparked the publication this book coincided with the removal of confederate monuments mitch landrieu and mitch and i are friends so he's visited my classrooms and spoken about the removal. it also a discourse about public space and public art and who controls that space and what should be there. so a park was renamed in honor. dunn most of you who have been to new orleans have probably

know exactly where is. it's an extremely prominent overlooking jackson square where the big jackson and the french quarter on the top of that levee is, a park called washington battery park. now, washington battery had been a confederate that defended the city, new orleans, from farragut. however, it's been renamed in honor of dunn, the state legislature also voted to put a statue up and a wrecked a bus in the state capitol. so i'll be there for both of those. i visit classrooms there regularly. in fact, be teaching a workshop this summer for educators that's being put on by the louisiana endowment of the arts and i'll also be talking at the historic new orleans collection at the ted with ted williams and richardsons. what's the arm of the new

orleans collection? williams library, i think, is what's called research center right on wall street. so fantastic. it's the discourse about around black history has totally been transformed after this. so i'm very, very happy to be a little factor in that lots of people know exactly who dan is now their school named in his honor which is fantastic for that little to being back that little sliver of american history. one final question because the audience may not know this. could you just speak very briefly about oscar dunn's death? because the controversy about it i mean, in 1870, when state's republican party had convention by that point, henry clay warner, the state's republican party, had largely turned against. the bolters faction of

republican party or the radical faction was led by dunn. and they were moving to impeach warmth, which would have made dunn outright governor of the state of louisiana on the eve of this vote, dunn falls deathly ill after banquet. and he dies within a day prompting of his supporters to maintain that he been poisoned by. his rivals, dunn would receive honors throughout state. all the state's offices were closed. all the city's offices were closed. and the largest funeral procession in the city's history would be held in honor of some maintaining that as many as 50,000 people participated. his funeral procession, black

and white. thank you. well, thank you all for your questions. and joining us today for our friends at c-span, we're going to honor the hard stomping. i'd like to thank my panelists, john and brian, for first sitting up here with me. i learned a lot and we're happy. stay around and talk with you. thank.