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1. Reconstruction and the Ongoing Project of Emancipation
In 1862, Frederick Douglass predicted that
the path to citizenship for African Americans
would require concerted effort: “Verily, the
work does not end with the abolition of
slavery, but only begins” (NAAL 107, NAAL
Shorter 55).
In 1893, Douglass reiterated, “There is no
Negro problem. The problem is whether the
American people have honesty enough,
loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism
enough to live up to their own Constitution”
(NAAL 6, NAAL Shorter 8).

2. Reconstruction is often taught as a period of retribution against the rebellious Southern states,
or as a period of reconciliation between the North and the South. In either account, the central
question is “How would the Union be reconstructed so that the states that had rebelled would
be reintegrated into a single nation?” (NAAL 107, NAAL Shorter 55). What often goes overlooked
are the challenges of African Americans to fully claim the freedoms promised by the
emancipation from slavery. “As challenging and unprecedented as [the reconstruction of the
South] was, it was entwined with an even larger and more fundamental one: What would be the
status and rights of the newly emancipated people—and indeed of all African Americans—in the
United States?” (NAAL 107, NAAL Shorter 55).
As explained by Frederick Douglass in these powerful quotes from a thirty-year period
surrounding the Reconstruction Era, African American rights were never guaranteed by
emancipation. While White Northerners and Southerners experienced Reconstruction as a
season of reconciliation, for African Americans throughout both North and South it was an
ongoing struggle to realize the promise of citizenship and equality.
Image Source: Major Acquisitions Centennial Endowment. The Art Institute of Chicago;
1996.433

3. Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution
• The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and
involuntary servitude (1865)
• The Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed citizenship to
everyone born in the United States (1868)
• The Fifteenth Amendment granted the right to vote to African
American men (1870)

4. The three Reconstruction Amendments were designed to further the work begun in 1863 by the Emancipation
Proclamation.
In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, abolishing slavery and involuntary
servitude.
“The Fourteenth Amendment (ratified in 1868) granted citizenship to all persons ‘born or naturalized in the
United States’—excluding Native Americans who were members of tribal nations—and guaranteed to all
citizens ‘equal protection of the laws’” (NAAL 107, NAAL Shorter 55).
“The Fifteenth Amendment (ratified in 1870) extended suffrage to African American men by prohibiting racial
discrimination in voting—a landmark achievement that had been unthinkable for most White Americans at the
outbreak of the Civil War. Notably, the Fifteenth Amendment did not offer the ballot to women, and it created a
cleavage between some White proponents of women’s rights and supporters of African American suffrage. As
that development demonstrates, the debates surrounding these amendments and other pieces of legislation
forced Americans to consider basic questions about the nature of citizenship, the relationship of the federal
government to the states, and the meaning of equality itself” (NAAL 107, NAAL Shorter 55).

5. African American Life in the Reconstruction Era

6. Allegories of Reconstruction in Huckleberry Finn

7. “[T]he many works of fiction [from this period] reflect on the legacy of slavery and the future of
African Americans in the United States. For instance, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn describes Jim’s escape from slavery and is set in the 1840s, but in fact Twain began writing
the story of Huck and Jim just as Reconstruction came to a close. Given that context, we might
ask how the convoluted ending of the book, in which Jim must endure unnecessary trials in his
quest for freedom, reflects an era in which the rights of African Americans remained under
siege” (NAAL 108, NAAL Shorter 56).
Huck Finn is one of many texts that gave voice to the challenges of Reconstruction for African
Americans: “Of all the social conflicts that animate the literature of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, none matches the force or complexity of the continued subjugation of Black
Americans during this period” (NAAL 5, NAAL Shorter 7). The texts in this cluster include
writings by four Black writers and one White advocate for African American rights that directly
articulate the challenges of Reconstruction in ways that texts like Huck Finn address in a more
allegorical manner.
Image credit: Huckleberry Finn, New York: Charles L. Webster & Co., 1885. Clifton Waller Barrett
Library of American Literature, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University
of Virginia

8. Jourdon Anderson, Letter of a Freedman to His Old Master
[My wife and I] have concluded to test your sincerity by asking
you to send us our wages for the time we served you. . . .
If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have
little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good
Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your
fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you
for generations without recompense. . . .
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol
from you when you were shooting at me.
(NAAL 111, NAAL Shorter 58–59)

9. The Fifteenth Amendment

10. The Fifteenth Amendment, James C. Beard, 1870
The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution states that “The right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This amendment extended voting rights to
African American men, but not to women—of any race. “Through the conclusion of the Civil War,
the abolitionist and the women’s rights movements worked as allies, with significant overlap in
their memberships. . . .The debates over the Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution,
however, would threaten and eventually fracture this partnership, as some prominent White
feminists became alarmed at the prospect that African American men could win access to the
ballot box before they did. In this 1866 speech to the National Women’s Rights Convention in
New York City—delivered at the same moment that Congress was considering what would
become of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—[Frances E. W.] Harper speaks to
those fears and responds to the emerging threat of a split between the factions.” (NAAL 112,
NAAL Shorter 60).
Source: Library of Congress

11. Frances E. W. Harper, “We Are All Bound Up Together”
I do not believe that giving the woman the ballot is immediately
going to cure all the ills of life. I do not believe that white women
are dew-drops just exhaled from the skies. . . .
You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs. I, as a
colored woman, have had in this country an education which has
made me feel as if I were in the situation of Ishmael, my hand
against every man, and every man’s hand against me.
(NAAL 113, NAAL Shorter 61)

12. Frederick Douglass, “Reconstruction”
[I]t is impossible for the Federal government to wholly destroy
[the impact and legacy of slavery], unless the Federal
government be armed with despotic power, to blot out State
authority, and to station a Federal officer at every cross-road.
This, of course, cannot be done, and ought not even if it could.
The true way and the easiest way is to make our government
entirely consistent with itself, and give to every loyal citizen the
elective franchise.
(NAAL 115, NAAL Shorter 63)

13. Albion W. Tourgée, “The Government Sleeps”
Nearly six months ago I
declared my belief that before
the election in August next the
Ku-Klux would have killed
more men in the State than
there would be members to be
elected to the Legislature. . . .
These crimes have been of
every character imaginable. . . .
And yet the Government
sleeps.
(NAAL 118–19, NAAL Shorter
66–67)

14. Robert Brown Elliott, The Civil Rights Bill (1874)
The passage of this bill will
determine the civil status,
not only of the negro, but of
any other class of citizens
who may feel themselves
discriminated against. It will
form the cap-stone of that
temple of liberty . . . until at
last it stands in all its
beautiful symmetry and
proportions, a building the
grandest which the world
has ever seen. (NAAL 122,
NAAL Shorter 70)