Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Foreword
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Wartime Washington
- 3 The Freedmen's Bureau in the District of Columbia
- 4 Congressional Reconstruction in the District of Columbia
- 5 Reconstructing the City Government
- 6 Race, Radicalism, and Reconstruction
- 7 A City and a State
- 8 From Biracial Democracy to Direct Rule
- 9 Reconstruction in the Nation's Capital
- Index
- References
2 - Wartime Washington
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2012
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Foreword
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Wartime Washington
- 3 The Freedmen's Bureau in the District of Columbia
- 4 Congressional Reconstruction in the District of Columbia
- 5 Reconstructing the City Government
- 6 Race, Radicalism, and Reconstruction
- 7 A City and a State
- 8 From Biracial Democracy to Direct Rule
- 9 Reconstruction in the Nation's Capital
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
The Civil War marked a clear rupture between the sleepy federal city of the antebellum era and the national capital that took its place after 1865. In the first place, the conflict greatly enlarged the federal presence in the city, not only in the shape of the men and materials that were hastily assembled to prosecute the war and then dispersed equally hastily on its conclusion but also in the shape of a more permanent expansion of federal power. Second, the wartime mobilization brought new people to the city. Soldiers, administrators, and businessmen from all across the North gravitated to the capital of the Union to play their part in the struggle – or to profit from it – and their coming brought a demographic transformation that had far-reaching implications for the future development of the city. Third, the election of 1860 and the subsequent secession of eleven southern states left most agencies of the federal government in the hands of the Republican Party, a party that had enjoyed only an embryonic existence in the city before the Civil War. Congressional Republicans did not hesitate to initiate a wide-ranging revision of the District's laws and institutions, beginning with the abolition of slavery in April 1862. They then set in motion processes leading to the creation of a viable local Republican Party that would eventually be strong enough to control the city government.
Information
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- Chapter
- Information
- Washington during Civil War and ReconstructionRace and Radicalism, pp. 20 - 59Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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