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Article Review Assignment

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Part 1
Article title: Continuing the War: White and Black Violence during Reconstruction
By Steven Hahn

The exposition is designed to promote critical thinking on American history. This is by providing

an elaborative and an analytical narration on important topics on U.S. history that occurred

before, during and after the civil war extending to the period of reconstruction. In this collection,

the essay by the distinguished American historian, Prof. Hahn, is a primary anthology to

introductory history of the U.S., covering chronological subjects that provoke and challenge the

thinking of American history1. More precisely, the author describes the period between the 19th

and 20th centuries by re-assessing the series in a new perspective.

The article further exposes violent disruptions that prevailed the South immediately after the

American Civil War. During this time, the former master and freed slaves were struggling to

control, construct and develop new economic, political and social relationships. But, all sorts of

the local incidences would only result to massive violence outbreaks. Then, political violence

sprung from the radical reconstruction. Organized groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, and others

like the Knights of the White Camelia, the White League in Louisiana emerged with the idea to

destroy and obstruct the Reconstruction government. They aimed at intimidating and

assassinating white and black Republican officials while using violence to prevent voting rights.

This was widely spread in the South. Also, it was mostly attributed to the fact that, there was

lack of a central organization and hence, the local groups spread all over the place2. Politically

speaking, it is also indicated that the groups had a common goal to restore white supremacy. At

1
Helen Castor, Blood and Roses: One Family’s Struggle and Triumph During the Tumultuous
Wars of the Roses (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2016), 97.
2
Ibid., 148.
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the time, the blacks who had contract disputes with their employers were victimized by the Klan.

For instance, the school teachers were victims of the Klan. Put differently, the use of violence by

these groups was to affect political, social and economic life was disrupted by Reconstruction.

In conclusion, prior to the civil war, African –Americans would only vote in a handful of the

northern states. Furthermore, they were not allowed to hold office (there was virtually no black

in public office)3. The months that would follow the Union victory (in 1865) saw a far-reaching

mobilization of the black communities, with petitions, parades and meetings that called for

political, and legal transformations include the right to vote. Particularly, in the first two years of

Reconstruction, the Equal Rights Leagues were organized by the blacks throughout the South.

These were local and state conventions to demand suffrage and protest discriminatory treatment,

besides objecting law inequality.

3
Vincent Redstone, “Social Condition of England during the Wars of the Roses,” Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society 16 (2015): 159, http://www.jstor.org/stable /3678121.
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Part 2
Article title: American Progressivism in the Wider Atlantic World,
By Daniel T. Rodgers

In this account, the author, Daniel Rodgers, highlights the progression of politics in America and

Europe from 1870 through 1940. The monumental assertion could never be timelier. Its

elucidation provides a spirited challenge to modern overview and conventional interpretation of

how the American politics evolved. In other words, Rodgers portrays a time in history that may

have been forgotten: a period when the governing institution was respected and the installed

blueprints borrowed for Europe worked efficiently.

But, the author still poses a central challenge. In an attempt to explain and interpret progression

of American politics, he portrays American politics as an import from Europe with very little

indigenous creation4. Arguably, with this interpretive innovation the book ambitions seem to

take a methodological departure. As opposed to limiting its scope to describing American

progression, it opens up the study to include an array of cosmopolitan intellectuals that have been

responsible in forming progressive policies. These include countries like Sweden, Australia,

France, England and Germany. The author has a bold insistence that in order to understand the

American progressivism, the audience ought to first comprehend the political experimentations

and idealism or the transatlantic worlds that shaped it. Consequently, this makes the book’s

thesis a rare combination of complexity and clarity, - a thing with a measurable dexterity.

4
Robert Baratheon, Account of the Conquest of the Southern Kingdom (New York: Penguin,
2017), 99-100.
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In summary, the book can be said to give different dimensional view to the Atlantic ties and the

Anglo-American relationships. It is conversant to these formidable ranges of topics while ably

putting ideas and not impersonal forces5. It shows that the century was a great era to reform not

mentioning that the Industrial revolution was of an Atlantic Origin.

5
Flynt Cole, “The American Fascination with International Espionage,” in The Rise and Fall of
Cold War Popular Culture, ed. Michael Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016),
55-56
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Bibliography

Baratheon, Robert. Account of the Conquest of the Southern Kingdom. New York: Penguin,
2017.

Castor, Helen. Blood and Roses: One Family’s Struggle and Triumph during the Tumultuous
Wars of the Roses. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2016.

Cole, Flynt. “The American Fascination with International Espionage.” In The Rise and Fall of
Cold War Popular Culture, edited by Michael Jones, 50-100. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2016.

Redstone, Vincent. “Social Condition of England During the Wars of the Roses.” Transactions
of the Royal Historical Society 16 (2015): 159. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3678121.