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CourseHIST 11927 lectures

The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877

David W. Blight · Yale University

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About

This course explores the causes, course, and consequences of the American Civil War, from the 1840s to 1877. The primary goal of the course is to understand the multiple meanings of a transforming event in American history. Those meanings may be defined in many ways: national, sectional, racial, constitutional, individual, social, intellectual, or moral. Four broad themes are closely examined: the crisis of union and disunion in an expanding republic; slavery, race, and emancipation as national problem, personal experience, and social process; the experience of modern, total war for individuals and society; and the political and social challenges of Reconstruction.

Lectures

  1. Introductions: Why Does the Civil War Era Have a Hold on American Historical Imagination? Lecture 1 · Audio
  2. Southern Society: Slavery, King Cotton, and Antebellum America's "Peculiar" Region Lecture 2 · Audio
  3. A Southern World View: The Old South and Proslavery Ideology Lecture 3 · Audio
  4. A Northern World View: Yankee Society, Antislavery Ideology and the Abolition Movement Lecture 4 · Audio
  5. Telling a Free Story: Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in Myth and Reality Lecture 5 · Audio
  6. Expansion and Slavery: Legacies of the Mexican War and the Compromise of 1850 Lecture 6 · Audio
  7. "A Hell of a Storm": The Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Birth of the Republican Party, 1854-55 Lecture 7 · Audio
  8. Dred Scott, Bleeding Kansas, and the Impending Crisis of the Union, 1855-58 Lecture 8 · Audio
  9. John Brown's Holy War: Terrorist or Heroic Revolutionary? Lecture 9 · Audio
  10. The Election of 1860 and the Secession Crisis Lecture 10 · Audio
  11. Slavery and State Rights, Economies and Ways of Life: What Caused the Civil War? Lecture 11 · Audio
  12. "And the War Came," 1861: The Sumter Crisis, Comparative Strategies Lecture 12 · Audio
  13. Terrible Swift Sword: The Period of Confederate Ascendency, 1861-1862 Lecture 13 · Audio
  14. Never Call Retreat: Military and Political Turning Points in 1863 Lecture 14 · Audio
  15. Lincoln, Leadership, and Race: Emancipation as Policy Lecture 15 · Audio
  16. Days of Jubilee: The Meanings of Emancipation and Total War Lecture 16 · Audio
  17. Homefronts and Battlefronts: "Hard War" and the Social Impact of the Civil War Lecture 17 · Audio
  18. "War So Terrible": Why the Union Won and the Confederacy Lost at Home and Abroad Lecture 18 · Audio
  19. To Appomattox and Beyond: The End of the War and a Search for Meanings Lecture 19 · Audio
  20. Wartime Reconstruction: Imagining the Aftermath and a Second American Republic Lecture 20 · Audio
  21. Andrew Johnson and the Radicals: A Contest over the Meaning of Reconstruction Lecture 21 · Audio
  22. Constitutional Crisis and Impeachment of a President Lecture 22 · Audio
  23. Black Reconstruction in the South: The Freedpeople and the Economics of Land and Labor Lecture 23 · Audio
  24. Retreat from Reconstruction: The Grant Era and Paths to "Southern Redemption" Lecture 24 · Audio
  25. The "End" of Reconstruction: Disputed Election of 1876, and the "Compromise of 1877" Lecture 25 · Audio
  26. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory Lecture 26 · Audio
  27. Legacies of the Civil War Lecture 27 · Audio

Syllabus and materials

At Open Yale Courses, as the course publishes them.

Credits and licence

Institution
Yale University
Department
History
Teacher
David W. Blight
Term
Spring 2008
Level
Undergraduate
Language
English
Subjects
History
Source
Open Yale Courses
Licence
CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US, as Open Yale Courses states it. Non-commercial use only. Open Yale Courses's terms
Attribution
Open Yale Courses, Yale University. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 licence; third-party material in the lectures is not.
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