Reconstruction

This is a free excerpt of Episode 5. To hear more, join Slate Plus -- slate.com/reconstruction The collapse of the antebellum Southern legal order left freedpeople exposed to violence from whites desperately trying to re-establish racial hierarchies. Some black people tried to defend themselves, acquiring weapons and forming militias. How common—and how effective—was that strat

This is free excerpt of Episode 4. To hear the entire series, join Slate Plus -- slate.com/reconstruction Formerly enslaved black Americans held a majority of the seats in South Carolina’s state Legislature in 1868, and no other state elected as many black Americans during the Reconstruction era. How successfully did these politicians wield their newfound power? And compared to o

This is a free preview of Reconstruction, a Slate Academy. Learn more at Slate.com/Reconstruction. Episode 1: Experiments in Land-owning: Davis Bend and Cameron Place Some freedpeople ended up owning parcels of the land they had worked when enslaved. Some formed intentional communities to farm it. By the end of Reconstruction, most of them had no land to their names. Amy Murrell Ta