The document provides a comprehensive timeline and analysis of American history covering the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the efforts of freedpeople through the 1870s. It discusses key events such as the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, the passage of civil rights amendments, and the struggles for land and education faced by African Americans. The document highlights various perspectives, including political actions, social aspirations, and artwork reflecting these historical moments.

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American Portraits: Andrew Johnson
President Andrew Johnson, 1866.
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American Portraits: Andrew Johnson
President Andrew Johnson, 1866.
Benjamin Cawthra, Ph.D.
California State University, Fullerton
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Reconstruction and the 1870s

2. Timeline: Reconstruction and the 1870s
Aspirations of the Freedpeople
The Failure of Land Reform
Southern White Freedom
The Radical Republican Response
An Unfinished Revolution
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Timeline: Reconstruction and the 1870s
President Johnson vetoes Civil Rights and Freedmen’s Bureau
bills. Congress overrides.
Congress approves Fourteenth Amendment.
Ku Klux Klan formed.
Congress passes Military Reconstruction Act over Johnson’s
veto. Also passes Tenure of Office Act.
Former CSA states hold constitutional conventions. Alabama,
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and
South Carolina readmitted.
President Johnson is impeached; escapes conviction by one
vote.
Ulysses S. Grant elected president.
Congress passes Fifteenth Amendment.
Knights of Labor organized.
1871 Tweed Ring scandals in New York City exposed.
1872 Mark Twain’s The Gilded Age published.
Grant reelected president.
1873 Panic of 1873 begins long depression.
1876 Exposure of Whiskey Ring reveals corruption in
Republican administration.
Hayes-Tilden election disputed.
Political compromise gives disputed electoral votes to Hayes in
exchange for withdrawal of federal troops from South.

3. Nationwide railroad strike and ensuing violence lead to use
of troops to put down strike.
2. Aspirations of Freed People
Winslow Homer, A Visit from the Old Mistress, 1876.
Oil on canvas. Smithsonian American Art Museum.
1. own land
2. women to leave fields
3. migrate to cities
4. restore families
5. education
6. the vote

4. Black workers in Savannah, 1867.
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3. The Failure of Land Reform
Thomas Nast, Entrance of the 55th Massachusetts (Colored)
Regiment into Charleston, South Carolina,
February 21, 1865, 1865.
Pencil, neutral wash, and oil, heightened with white, on board.
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Ex-slaves picking cotton in Georgia, 1867.

5. Barrow Plantation, 1860 and 1881.
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4. Southern White Freedom
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Thomas Nast, This Is a White Man’s Government,
Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 3, 1868.
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5. The Radical Republican Response
Mathew Brady, House Impeachment Managers, 1868.
Photograph.
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6. 5. The Radical Republican Response
Thomas Nast, The Massacre at New Orleans, from “Grand
Caricaturama,” 1867.
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Civil War Amendments
Thirteenth Amendment (1866): ends slavery
Fourteenth Amendment (1868): defines birthright citizenship
Fifteenth Amendment (1870): extends the right to vote to
freedmen
Thomas Nast, The Franchise, 1870, Harpers Weekly.
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Winslow Homer, The Cotton Pickers, 1876.
Oil on canvas. Los Angeles County Museum of Art
6. An Unfinished Revolution

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5. Racism as a Limit to Change
Thomas Nast, The Union As It Was,
Harper’s Weekly, 1874.
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8. American Portraits: Phil Sheridan
“The Valley, from Winchester up to Staunton, ninety-two miles,
will have little in it for man or beast.”
Gen. Phil Sheridan, USA
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HIST 180 Survey of American History
Benjamin Cawthra, Ph.D.
California State University, Fullerton
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The Civil War and the 1860s
Timeline: The Civil War and the 1860s
Secession and Sumter
A New Birth of Freedom
War and Freedom
The Meaning of Emancipation
Winslow Homer: Images of War
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Timeline: The Civil War and the 1860s
Abraham Lincoln elected president.

9. South Carolina secedes from the Union.
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas
secede.
Jefferson Davis becomes president of the Confederate
States of America.
CSA fires on Fort Sumter; Civil War begins.
Union disaster at First Battle of Bull Run.
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant wins victories in Tennessee, including
costly one at Shiloh.
Gen. George B. McClellan repulsed outside Confederate
capitol, Richmond.
Gen. Robert E. Lee invades Maryland; retreats after Battle
of Antietam.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation takes effect.
Lee’s second invasion of North ends in defeat at
Gettysburg.
Grant takes Vicksburg; Union regains control of
Mississippi River.
Grant and Lee fight series of battles in Virginia prior to siege of
Petersburg.
Gen. William T. Sherman takes Atlanta, marches to the
sea.
Lincoln re-elected president.
Sherman continues destructive march through the Carolinas.
Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House.
Lincoln assassinated; Andrew Johnson becomes president.
Thirteenth Amendment ratified.
Secession and Sumter

10. Mathew Brady, Jefferson Davis, c. 1856
“We have labored to preserve the Government of our fathers in
spirit.”
Jefferson Davis, 1861.
Mathew Brady, View of Washington, D.C., 1861.
Lincoln’s First Inaugural, 1861
“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in
mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.”
Abraham Lincoln, 1861
Fort Sumter, c. 1860.

11. “Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose
us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet’s
nest which extends from mountain to ocean and legions now
quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it
puts us in the wrong; it is fatal.”
Robert Toombs to Jefferson Davis, 1861.
Robert Toombs, c. 1861.
Interior of Fort Sumter, 1861
“Our Southern brethren have done grievous wrong. They have
rebelled and have attacked their father’s house and their loyal
brothers. They must be punished and brought back but this
necessity breaks my heart.”
Major Robert Anderson, 1861.
Maj. (Gen.) Robert Anderson, 1861

12. “Woe to those who began this war if they were not in bitter
earnest . . .”
“Not by one word or look can we detect any change in the
demeanor of the negro servants. They make no sign. Are they
stolidly stupid or wiser than we are, silent and strong, biding
their time?”
Mary Chesnut, 1861
Mary Chesnut
2. A New Birth of Freedom
“We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word
we do not mean the same thing.”
Abraham Lincoln, 1864.
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13. Gen. George B. McClellan
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Alexander Gardner, Casualties near Dunker Church, Antietam.
Photograph, 1862. Library of Congress.
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Procession to National Cemetery at Gettysburg, November
1863.

14. Lincoln on the dais, Gettysburg National Cemetery, November
1863.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on
this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated
to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Gettysburg, where advance units of the two armies clashed on
July 1, 1863.
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“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that
nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war.
Dead from the first day’s fighting at Gettysburg, 1863.
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“We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final

15. resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation
might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do
this.
Little Round Top, Gettysburg, 1863.
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“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not
consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men,
living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far
above our poor power to add or detract.
The dead in front of a farm house near the Peach
Orchard, Gettysburg, 1863.
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“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say
here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the
living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which
they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
Alfred Waud, Offensive of Cemetery Ridge, Gettysburg,
1863. Drawing.
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“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task
remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take

16. increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last
full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these
dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth.”
Abraham Lincoln, “Dedicatory Remarks,” Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, November 13, 1863.
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3. War and Freedom
Ulysses S. Grant at Brady’s studio, Washington, 1864.
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Winslow Homer, Inviting a Shot Before Petersburg, 1865.
Oil on canvas.
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17. John Reekie, A Burial Party, Cold Harbor, Virginia, April 1865.
Photograph, from Alexander Gardner, Alexander Gardner’s
Photographic Sketch Book of the War, 1866.
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Winslow Homer, Bivouac Fire on the Potomac, 1861,
Engraving. Harper’s Weekly, December 21, 1861.
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Winslow Homer, The Bright Side, 1865.
Oil on canvas.
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“Once let the black man get upon his person the letter, U.S.; let
him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder
and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth which can
deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.”

18. Frederick Douglass, 1862
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Thomas Nast, Entrance of the 55th Massachusetts (Colored)
Regiment into Charleston, South Carolina, February 21, 1865,
1865.
Pencil, neutral wash, and oil, heightened with white, on board.
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Kurz and Allison, Storming Fort Wagner, 1890.
Chromolithograph.
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19. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, panel of the Memorial to Robert
Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, 1897.
Bronze. Boston Common.
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Veterans of the Massachusetts 54th at the unveiling of the Shaw
Memorial, 1897.
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African Americans were targets during the New York City draft
riots of 1863.
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20. Eastman Johnson, A Ride for Liberty: The Fugitive Slaves, ca.
1862-63.
Oil on board.
5. The Meaning of Emancipation
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Theodor Kaufman, On to Liberty, 1867.
Oil on canvas.
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6. Winslow Homer: Images of War
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Winslow Homer, Playing Old Soldier, 1863.
Oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Winslow Homer, The Cotton Pickers, 1876. Oil on canvas.
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Winslow Homer, Near Andersonville, 1866.
Oil on canvas. Newark Museum.
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Winslow Homer, Near Andersonville, 1866. Oil on canvas.
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Winslow Homer, Trooper Meditating beside a Grave, 1865.
Oil on canvas.
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22. Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field, 1866.
Oil on canvas.
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