Emancipating the World: Reconstruction and the Rise of American International Humanitarianism

This paper examines Reconstruction after the Civil War as a pivotal episode in the development of an alliance between the Federal government and private organizations that pursued aggressive interventions abroad on behalf of the rights of, and humanitarian relief for, oppressed minorities.  Two non-governmental organizations, the American Missionary Association and the American Red Cross, played key roles in the development of American international humanitarianism.  Each forged strategic alliances with the U.S. government at key moments to pursue their “human rights” agendas.  American Missionary Association, founded in 1846 exemplified the dedication of American abolitionists to the total suppression of the slave trade, international slave emancipation, and the global spread of Christian and antislavery principles.  During Reconstruction, the AMA shifted its focus from its work in Africa, the Pacific and elsewhere abroad, and took a leading role, working in hand-in-hand with the U.S. government, in the relief and cultural “uplift” of freedpeople through educational programs and economic assistance.  The AMA remained active in the South long after Reconstruction, while many of its workers traveled from the South to other locations abroad, such as Hawaii, where AMA missionaries pushed for annexation in the 1890s on humanitarian grounds.  In addition, the American Red Cross, founded in 1881 by famed Civil War nurse Clara Barton, had its roots in abolitionism and relief work undertaken during the Civil War and Reconstruction.  Like the AMA, the American Red Cross cultivated a reciprocal relationship with the U.S. government, depending upon U.S. diplomatic assistance in its missions abroad.  Red Cross workers in Cuba helped persuade the McKinley Administration to intervene in the war against Spain in 1898.  This paper will examine the links between the 1860s and the 1890s, and explore how Reconstruction laid the ideological and organizational groundwork for the “humanitarian” interventions of the 1890s.