Registration is Open: The Rise and Fall of the Not-So-Invisible Empire

Registration is now open for my next online lecture series in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at California State University-East Bay:  The Rise and Fall of the Not-So-Invisible Empire.  

You can register on the OLLI website by clicking here.   Hope to see you there!  In the meanwhile, check out a few of my recommended readings in a previous post.   [Of course, I'll have created a lengthy bibliography by the time the series starts as usual.]  

You might also find the PBS American Experience page Reconstruction: The Second Civil War worth checking out.

On a misty April evening in 1865, a jubilant crowd packed the White House lawn to hear President Abraham Lincoln first speech since the end of the Civil War. They expected a stirring celebration of the Union victory — but instead got harsh reality. Even with the South defeated, Lincoln warned, the future would be "fraught with great difficulty." He called the task ahead reconstruction — a word that returned to American headlines nearly a century and a half later, in the aftermath of the war in Iraq.

Even as Lincoln spoke, opposing forces were gathering. Some Americans saw Reconstruction as a chance to build a new nation out of the ashes of war and slavery. Others vowed to wage a new war to protect their way of life, and a racial order they believed ordained by God. Lincoln saw the problem with agonizing clarity. Bitter enemies, North and South, had to be reconciled. And four million former slaves had to be brought into the life of a nation that had ignored them for centuries. In some ways, it was harder than winning the war.

Three days after delivering his warning, Lincoln was shot dead. Reconstruction would have to go forward without him.

Spanning the momentous years from 1863 to 1877, Reconstruction tracks the extraordinary stories of ordinary Americans — Southern and Northern, white and black — as they struggle to shape new lives for themselves in a world turned upside down.

Reconstruction:  The Second Civil War

American Experience 

Aired January 12, 2004