American Experience; Reconstruction: The Second Civil War; Interview with Dana D. Nelson, Historian, University of Kentucky, part 2 of 2

his new rules and think that the people with whom he's been tracking for labor are basically not making unreasonable demands they're not making so we can replace them laughable and in the end she portrays that the people who she's negotiating with has been basically lazy and not wanting to look at austin says they don't know where the crop there they're making very reasonable demands as her own account details even against her representation that i think i discovered in this process that she was very very smart businesswoman and she was probably a better business when their father had been a businessman she understood that she made the concessions that these three people on it she wouldn't crop said she basically needs to make enough from them to cover their

lawsuit demands and then snip when she isn't that he's giving up rog and choose to start so she outlined very firmly engaged and just and now i'm an attention that they could feel that they were recently been simplified and on the basis of familiarity along an impossibly and loathing willing to sign a contract so what he doesn't negotiate these contracts are swirling again and she details at several other points that she is able to enrich cd in these contract negotiations should be on him in place and hear that same sentence workers are keeping up a licensing agreement and sign contracts and she goes rose over two thousand or so road that plantation and those people say ok now the fans here will sign and this is her and yet maybe once i think

that that hurt her willingness to go in and talk to the workers was often the thing that made the difference and then she reports in the letters to her family that she gets the contracts and every year more quickly and more efficiently than their neighbors it's something he's repeatedly voicing her crying she has this fascination with four parks she feels that this is beneath her that it's a waste of time that she shouldn't have to thank for favors from people who have been you know in her family she increasingly through the record of her class cause my people in a way that seems less and less about clements and more and more about proprietary demands she gets

more and more frustrated in coordination with the increasing political awareness and activism i've been in three people in the area so you know and when she endures first comeback alone nobody really knows what's happening nobody really understands how this is going to fall out over time fish and of course everybody is disappointed in the outcome of the civil war and in the aftermath are in the process of reconstruction three blocs don't get nearly what they had been hoping for and of course every little thing that they get is more than the former plantation hamsters wouldn't want to conceive and so as fast aldis where simon and the african americans become more experienced and negotiating for themselves more politically aware of what they can ask for what they can expect

and in fact as they begin to use some of the cash proceeds from their labor on a plantation slave wives and their own land and go start making their own wine and because more and more patients more in question our losses here and two there were these days of ninety aren't weeks i think a very sensible response they understand that they can have the same kinds of living conditions that they work for themselves on their own land for far less labor and so you know if they land and their farming their own movements and catching fish again they can work safer thirty five forty fifty years really cannot six years so they actually have a nice life if they'll contract to work on the

plantations and they don't have to work in the race he owned and so they can avoid all the difficult labor all together so it actually says the very same response to me and of course it's very frustrated by that feels as though they're not being appreciated her and what she can give them in the same way that she's frustrated when after she and her father go the trouble of setting a store on the plantation so that the three people can buy consumer goods at the price that they pay for them were they turn their nose up and prefer to buy their goods at shops and darien where insist they pay a lot more but they are great sense of freedom and shoelace and teaches exercise in life and thinks they're being crazy and he's going to

do all day it tensions the logical tensions of bands position on her gripping your logical position in the aftermath the emancipation show in the details of her own that the trajectory of her comments about the free african americans when she first ghost and she writes a letter and sent him when it didn't stick teach them to one that means money and so you know her out for them beat up with the name so many middle class consumers why things they don't really need so they

presumably the waiver harder so that they in nineteen ninety three and it was the plantation story because it's not only not hurting profits run said that she complains they knew they would be one simple only a mainstay of the area so maybe when i can see my aunts and she doesn't want the one on its like there might suspicions ones that women wearing scarves like they used to the colorful scarves and slavery so you an ancestor suffered a very conflicted on the one hand he wants to see herself as being a benevolent patron for their there shift into a life of freedom and ambulances and freedom party the additives that go with it at all because it directly jeopardizes her own sound ms boyle

fans barry how we learn and how we didn't raise basic understanding basic attitude was that as long as they're written sales owning slaves trying to work on that together all you would have with a bunch of tension iran of the same attitudes that they think that the situation will not be better as long as there are people who had been slaves and people have been

slave owners and south and so she goes into an object at first and was about to listen to her mother and that subject or any other subject that have anything to do with her father ordinance that slave woman and she was determined to make a go of it and she was very determined to make her way in what she thinks are very explicitly the man's world and so in a certain sense versus the three african americans were figuring out so these new political thinker really new roles for themselves scientists fanned out pioneering a new space for women for single women in the south and an inherent resistance everywhere so she saw her ability to succeed in any terms and she compared herself to the other male patient

folders he records in the first negotiation the labor negotiations some of her potential workers that one of them one of them finally explained to her women are just said no no no and basically what we say is women don't have a half of these kinds of negotiations we can negotiate with you because you're a woman so you know she was very proud of her ability to to overcome the traditionally and subservient crippled status of luminous to insert yourself in the long run i think what we our job well is representation and not notice anyone who's actually recovered a copy of his notes it's only in the restaurant ends description not quite knowing where the

route cuts that is that the notice also implied that it would be fine and he was indignant about it is confusing i just what do you want to talk about the rest of that notices that just going whoa ok you heard the notice fan suggests that the notice threatened to find anyone who didn't come to the meeting and she was very very angry about her workers being called an education for any reason whatsoever including during the work day and so she protested this military headquarters this means continents campbell who wanted to talk to these people about upcoming elections and the pricing of their political rights organize them

politically own health and begin exercising their new civic freedoms and so that is a major impingement on who writes patents and clear until in the distance within the state bergsten analysts say that because it seems to the two scandals and then enormous persuasive powers that this this land somehow a giant human being that he had an extraordinary presence that could not fail to impact the people he encountered as for instance when he's finally convicted and sent off to laboring convict labor and is hired by a plantation

owner who despised him within a very short time he's been freed by the plantation owner of the chains and spend and signed a much easier work simon kids like him very much and so because families are traced to his family in the most articulate way an end for jason lee as a representative of the type that type of but in scandal what would be very peaceful relations and otherwise and review it i get the impression that she must never actually allow herself is this man in person no no

what do you think i believe that in a scandal to be on the supermarket aisle the heat he's so family portrayed in most polite period if you just say but at the same time very idealistic about the possibilities for african american citizenship but at the same time very savvy about the nature of power relations and so he he wasn't willing to sue to cast african

american political rights it's something that should happen on their off hours and so i think you're sending he was trying to be fertile frivolously interrupted i think it's sending a very calculated message that political rights in a democracy in iraq our citizenship and you know demands rehearsal during the day when we all have energy to think clearly not unlike the results that really are i think he was that kind of a democratic review ending in a fascinating way and this is just a key this is such an interesting man on the air at the same time that he was organizing blacks in darien and on the islands into militias an understanding very clearly that that blacks would probably need to defend themselves from attacks on the thoughts and why

community he was lobbying congress for a colorblind was to me repeatedly he would china color entitlements or colored descriptions removed from the laws that they were creating in the georgia congress and so you want respect for james campbell it's obviously not respect the end i want to see unification well later on this is an amazing he says the

us tennis season and kohn represented two pieces of that very large picture two pieces that resonate in the history of the time and in tunis was i think a marvelous example of bats to their radical republicans vision for reconstruction very deal that that the civil war would mean more than unifying and south that would mean a radical social and political change for the future of the nation or the african americans a renowned officially members of that nation on iran to those scandals vision when saleem well beyond what even the best radical republicans could imagine and for that reason that the radical republicans could neither imagined that

weller muster enough support for it in the political structure of the nation and that's the thing that very much fort worth and butler saw for a job from home and i think that's a tragedy i think we should spend a lot more time studying the collection scandal so that we can understand very clearly the idealism and passion for democracy along that was living across the south and across the united states and would an information just roll proceed oh yeah

are they and how and quite icy remembers an uncertain moment that stands out prominently in her account of her management of the plantation she actually had an exchange with military authorities an area that's because at all and has been ordered to release there and in place for forty period to accomplish they're voting and it was that day yes and so the advice was that slippery about the projects and pianist and since perhaps ironic humor and a good time she

was planting some fields and he felt that it wouldn't materially damage her parents to recent reports that long time and so steven and they're saying don't you think it could be reasonably done at the end of the day but here in so the details or all the things that are going to happen once people ride into town and they tell her you have to come and she suppressed the letters she refuses to tell their workers that they can you know renee it's so on the first morning he wakes up to anguish plantation manager telling her that every worker on the plantations in a long time and she's the cyprus can't read this breach obedience he's furious and the plantation she stressed that the system you think

well interestingly there all by three point nine and then they all worked late into the evening ends the mission manager reports opponents morning that those who are not able to manage that day's work i promise to work extra time the long day he is leaving her and so she understands that episode as successful exertion power and i think the apathy disobeyed or it speaks very much to the country and that has that's right that's right now there's absolutely no doubt that it is going to create a

problem for the plants in until recently one for four days she is she's i considered at reasonable interest in having her neighbors were granted you know labor during that period and it's you know it's one of those classic conflicts in nine states among tents practice of capitalism and democracy often notice those interests are in competition and this is one of those cases where eric whitney was wrong and senator cruz showed he has been disbarred

and what he i think tennis is going is to create a sense of democratic agency in political power and so agency for the three people in the coastal areas you organize them into militias he made it clear to them that they have the right to defend themselves and their property and their political interests and as people began exercise these riots in and about these awareness is the house for power became little beer served a little more explicit it starts to show up and fans own accounts the current language becomes less than alan some

paternalistic and she begins more and more using marshall metaphors to describe her interactions with the workers on the plantations that he talked about breaking the back on the opposition she she she sees as a war zone so it's it's clear that as reconstruction develops things get more and more tense more and more of it than the man he's become more and more determined not to lose control and every people become themselves more we were determined not to lose control ms bee i think that

the probably the easy answer to that would be you know the more complicated answer has to do with the very different situations and richard thompson and he did it again i i think you have to answer that question by taking into account the very different positions of perjury clinton moments in and starts bit further inland she was not a member of the ultra of me and she certainly did come from raspberry blanchard well in georgia and she didn't have the residence and work that she can skip to for months of the year or years on end she didn't have family in england she knew she could she had to live in georgia and so he

really had to resign in this new social world in a much more prominent way and an aggregate and he can skate or stand knew that he hadn't worlds she belonged in and so i think for those two women get it meant a very different kind of negotiation and in some very real way would remain above that world in a way that gertrude hundreds simply couldn't or two she had what she hoped to see that her daughter would marry in that new world and was unattached band didn't have a husband to worry about are for these early years and didn't have a job or to read that she had no real family attachments there she had only an achievement that an achievement that she which

she wanted to be able to prove herself very much maybe to her deceased father certainly true and she almost begs him to appreciate her accomplishments and it's it's a poignant appeal because it's clear that the modern love being able to support yourself financially it's hard for her mother to live as a proper southern lady was she was married to pearson not the adult population not be able to act and i think it made him very happy to be able to return to align with economic achievement and henry james a job later on that you know and kept publishing memoirs an uneven henry james who joked that she she maybe didn't notice the reviews of your books which certainly did notice the income from which she knew she liked that sense of accomplishment she likes being able to give her daughter's the world than standing that their father had been able to provide for them because of his bad gambling speculation stock market and an inherited that from her

mother but she would never end and you can see that in the letters that she writes when she doesn't expect her mother to reshape the sheets down but she very much wants to do they're on opposite sides of the political side and sandy emotional think his family once her mother to be able to be janice years and like attend the baptism of the second son that that band names after on their own students in the first year but the morning after her father and her son died within twenty four hours the next game of thrones the year and her mother refused to prince

about this because she was sending him here you go well in many ways he was a perfect match were and i you know i don't i think he had to be reminded that her father i think he was very charming and he was very philosophical so the family acquaintances plaintiff against him for for not being a very deep thinker and i think it was just right for and in that sense i don't like her father or even when it'll all very much on politics in general and it's like you know the reason she found some sympathy for him he had become among serve locally notorious of music getting up and lack a simple form in black gates of his his nicknames jim bopp and so

clearly he shared some of her own attitudes about white supremacy and the appropriateness of white people pulling african people's as science and so it made for a smooth political match it and they seemed to have gotten along very well even after they move back to england which was a place that and that's why he seems to put up with power frequently voiced dislike for having an and they seem to do very well as a couple of sara's and they don't seem to make happy marriage after this spectacular event i think another

reason that remains such a good choice for him was that he very quickly became invested into plantations and so even know and when you're in a city and subservient life and in random roommates in marrying and having to give up on her investment her emotional and an economic and physical investments in plantation for actor only good thing for her about me was that he very quickly became interested in the plantations and wanted to try to make a go there as well so he joined her match long and uncertain sense and times online nation within the first year was actually improving the yield on the plantation stands at the same time that he was working to improve the physical violence was also working to improve spiritual vargas he was helping fannie making sure that an enduring school would be put in place but also

then helping to build a church in saint cyprian so he was preaching regularly to workers on plantations is making sure that they would be in school properly and i think not only united states maybe not even accurate to say that he shared passions and pinky actually amplified i think he brought a whole new career both on agricultural and human rights concerns to the plantations even while he was very much enjoying this kind of adoptive place as through plantations older so it worked for a little while and first arrives at the patients

after the war she is in the letters describing are in summarizing the letters remembering the beauty in and the loveliness of nine orange trees in new orleans jazz really is a very beautiful place and she makes a passing comment that in the course of her narrative she never specifically thought that she says this of course was before the serpent had entered into my garden and interestingly how she never does make exactly clear what she meant by that and so careful readers are left to infer and i think it's you infer carefully place to happen is super clinton scandal see on the sea caricaturist and he's very aware of an issue the white planters attempts to navigate their way around him to try to bribe him for instance in to represent their interests and their interests as he sees them are three people

at a certain point she actually taught me that noble and describes him as someone who offered to the former slaves the fruits of the tree of knowledge and so i think you have taken in her mind to play the part of the proposed upset the pain i was

shy he's visited new orleans i think if you read even though she never makes it clear what you know i think if you read carefully not to conclude that she sees to the scandal as the same figures in this los angeles and her garden of eden and the spoils the the gannett paradise perfectly orderly hierarchical

relationships he is the one who introduces the ideal real equality of radical equality and in her eyes that messes up the beauty of the boss's boss's seat and certainly wherever lawsuits proceeding against bruce campbell and she replaced that one way a factually garbled account of what the lawsuits were about to count the mexican it's ridiculous and it also makes it seamless the lawsuits have nothing to do with his interest in the freedoms black laborers but only in harassing white people see i think followed it i think you can infer from her campus she followed the trials and the proceedings with a great deal of interest and she does announcing his finely convicted that she'll never have to worry that again

own so she is certainly pleased when he is reduced to the status of the company however illegally that might have been shiites for homes ms izzy races and he laid out and is that something we can talk about that that all at once you know the city and you know and her ten years and the region and patients doesn't demonstrate very much attention toward the kinds of political battles

that have been filed over status in the course of reconstruction in washington dc and and i suppose you might conclude from that that she wasn't a very politically minded person than another conclusion that i think you could fairly dry is that she was literally obsessed with the management of these two very large plantations this was no small towns and you know i i've said this before and i think it's impossible not to know at least those some admiration for the verve and being successful in which she makes these plantations go for several years all their cell so maybe that's it i think and i was living a version of a life that many people lived in the deep south after along the end of the civil war on everyone's trying to figure out how to make a living again all of their livelihoods the day in deeply upset during the worst of the world and

so people were very focused on what was a very close to home and on and no more displays a pianist and her account an interest in what's going on in washington dc then she goes what's going on leno are new orleans and he's in focus and he says at one point on one day race riots race he says a lot of the usual business of the beast and discuss today a scandal where a nine stone the black workers into their militias trish there and there was a growing awareness among whites the possibility that there

could be an organized military resistance in their attempts to dominate the workers they were living in counties where they were seriously outnumbered apples and in their neighborhoods by african americans and so now just demonstrating hurt stereo awareness of the possibility that there could be an armed insurrection in her area residents she's such a macho and i think he takes that such pride in having a kind of cavalier macho attitude about it and she says in one way you know she's always been warned by friends and word about the dangers ends then she and she doesn't understand that would be an insurrection and for that reason she sleeps every night with a pistol by her fellow but he says he has no confidence in the loyalty of the people who work for

her and that she really convinced that if there was an insurrection someone winter crop and he would be on the way he or she can so she professes never to be seriously worried by this except she doesn't and she keeps you should accept this one when she first there one of those in the first year that she's down there with her father he's up on another plantation and she hears a disturbance down by the river and it's now worried that some kind of interaction with historian and so he takes to her and cox an enhanced into the river and it turns out to be no rockets about some mules then and no serious that her off and then she realizes she's really nice too loaded pistols and she celebrated jazz and pop and so she takes and puts them in the vast until her father can get there to disarm and that's really the only time she portrays herself and she portrays israel

salinas reporter and that's really the only time that she'll admit to having reacted on here do you disagree with me her husband is wonderful about helping on the plantations and they do that for several years but it's think it's harder and harder to find people are willing to work in the rice fields there are number of home you know the backdrop years now and growing conditions hands

there's a big fire on one of the plantations everything burns down and they can be rebuilt but then you know the next thing that happens is the race factor those incidents and so they have to start selling representing the rights themselves and eventually just a consumer to jail and somewhere around this time the hands that possibility taking on an appointed back in england and he decides to do that and so fantastic as this began as the obedient wife that he wants to be a man and and so she issued a statement right for the president of the south thank you

carrie big investment in her family's whole thing and i think when it became clear that there was no profitable way to silence and she she relinquished that idea and so it's it's you know for me what's so interesting and that then has to do with her personal development as a woman a woman who had had an enormously and emotionally very difficult childhood with you know two of the most publicly divorced parents in the united states on with you know the father she adored and a mother and she apparently saw between the ages of eleven and one and and so much of what's interesting about anne is how consciously she wants to carry on pearson's legacy and how unconsciously she carries her mother's back baumann and her

grit and her determination and how those forces are a little bit of worm within than in ways that she can't see their both reductive of her best successes and also some from biggest flaws and and so you know i think because i don't because i am always knew she was going to stay in the south and she could make the plantations going to probably nine stan united states i think are meeting house more to do with her kind of icon a really exceptional status as a single woman making an independent living ask a plantation owner in sports saab know what she accomplishes me read by all the rules aristocratic white woman it i am and the way here one example of a steel

magnolia she's certainly make yourself into that example in the argument will win well welcome to the citizens are in his territory he's healing the patients and the closer he came to the end of which he knew would be her single time when inflation and the same is true as she came to the end of her time with her cousin there the more she thought that she loved people and would be bereft without them in fact she is they're both stayed in touch throughout their lives of the people who were assembled on the plantations and something that families really never

lost contact which is something that i think is interesting now how you might feel at that fancy managerial policies for those people it's it's also clear that she had an enduring commitment to them and an enduring interest in their lives after he left them thank you fb