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The Political Culture Of Reconstruction

Decent Essays

In Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction, Laura Edwards studied how gender, race, and class shaped not only the political terrain of the South during Reconstruction, but also its private and public foundations. Edwards viewed the Southern household during this period as a “highly contested political issue.” Following the war, changes swept southern society regarding how households were defined, who were the heads of those households, and what rights these heads and their dependents held. She argued that African American and common white women became a very loud and “vigorous public presence both during and after the Civil War.” Being poor, black, or both, these women demanded that concerns for their family’s welfare and safety, such as issues of rape and physical violence, be heard. Therefore, these women “moved private issues onto the public stage.” Within her work, Edwards extended Reconstruction to the end of the nineteenth century. She stated that “racial and class hierarchies appeared as ‘natural’ as gender hierarchy, and the political power of poor white and African-American men appeared as pointless as that of women.” She discussed that the end of Reconstruction concluded at different times in different places throughout North Carolina, ultimately ending with the white supremacy campaign in 1898 leading to disfranchisement. Before 1898, many African Americans and “dissenting whites retained their grip on local power,” which

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