The Ends of Reconstruction

The process of making historical memory does not necessarily wait for the end of the era to be memorialized. To an extent perhaps unprecedented in United States history, except for times of war, commentators recognized that Reconstruction marked a distinctive and historically important epoch. Americans' peculiar awareness of their historical surroundings during this period led to two distinct and related occurrences. First, this awareness encouraged commentators to try to shape the lasting historical meaning of Reconstruction, even as it was underway. Recognizing that future generations would remember Reconstruction, commentators sought to leave their own mark on the process. Second, these attempts to prefabricate historical memory led to a peculiar cultural and linguistic trope: a veritable cultural obsession with declaring Reconstruction a fait accompli.
    My paper, then, will discuss "The Ends of Reconstruction" – the multiplicity of moments at which northern commentators declared the finish ("the end") of Reconstruction, and how these cultural pronouncements affected the political and social goals/meanings/success ("the ends") of Reconstruction. The shape of the Reconstruction project, I argue, looks radically different depending on the moment at which one draws the finish line, and nineteenth century northerners understood this point acutely. As Yankees of various stripes called Reconstruction to a halt (metaphorically and linguistically, if not yet politically), I suggest, they engaged in the construction of historical memory from the inside.
    My paper will analyze a number of would be "ends" – the passage of the 15th Amendment, the Liberal Republican campaign of 1872, the Louisiana/Mississippi violence of 1873-1875, the "bargain" of 1876, and Frederick Douglass' refusal to concede an end to Reconstruction in the early 1880s -- in order to point to the manner in which northerners attempted to control the historical meaning of Reconstruction even as they declared it finished.