Reconstruction in a Globalizing World

Th e Reconstruction period is usually considered one of the most inward-looking periods in American history. When considered in international comparison, the years from 1865 to 1877 have a reputation as unique in mounting a thorough attempt to replace the institutions of slavery and institute liberal forms of equality. Momentous though the period was in the expropriation of slave-owners’ property and in granting freedom and civil rights to African-American people, that observation should not exclude historians from setting the Reconstruction period in the context of world history. Th e transition from unfree labor of various shapes and forms to free labor occurred across the Americas from the 1830s to 1880s, and also in Russia with the emancipation of the serfs between 1861 and 1866. Moreover, in the realm of national consolidation and state-building, the United States can be situated within the broader phenomenon of nationalism, both in Europe and beyond. Still another comparison can be found in the patterns of racial domination and new forms of coerced labor and racially stratified citizenship that replaced slave labor in the Americas. Cover 1 RECONSTRUCTION IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD 2 Title 6 Copyright 7 Dedication 8 Contents 10 Foreword 12 Introduction 16 1 Our South American Cousin: Domingo F. Sarmiento and Education in Argentina and the United States 36 2 Liberia College and Transatlantic Ideologies of Race and Education, 1860–1880 65 3 Transatlantic Liberalism: Radical Republicans and the British Reform Act of 1867 89 4 The Arms Scandal of 1870–1872: Immigrant Liberal Republicans and America’s Place in the World 109 5 “The Failure of the Men to Come Up”: The Reinvention of Irish-American Nationalism 136 6 Incorporating German Texas: Immigrant Nation-Building in the Southwest 160 7 Reconstruction, from Transatlantic Polyseme to Historiographical Quandary 187 Afterword: The Possibilities of Reconstruction’s Global History 224 List of Contributors 232 Index 234