The Future of Reconstruction Studies

Reconstruction in the West
http://journalofthecivilwarera.org/forum-the-future-of-reconstruction-studies

It is time to reconstruct our thinking about Reconstruction. Specifically, we need to reconceive the middle of the nineteenth century as a time when the United States was fundamentally changed by two events, the Civil War and our expansion to the Pacific between 1845 and 1848. Each event altered greatly the national trajectory, and so each deserves our attention on its own terms. Both, however, interacted, raised, or amplified the same basic questions and answered those questions in strikingly similar ways. Bringing the two narratives together requires us to expand the boundaries of Reconstruction in both time and space. The Greater Reconstruction began in 1845 and ended around 1877, with the withdrawal of the last federal troops from the South and the culmination of the War against Indian America, and it encompassed the full expanded nation, from coast to coast and in its new international connections, in particular with Latin America to the south and the Pacific basin the west.

Expansion played crucially in the national narrative from then until now. It brought into the United States’ boundaries the extraordinary resources, starting with gold and silver, that fueled the nation’s rise to global power. Its geographical challenges provoked new technologies and new partnerships of government and business. Its sudden inclusion of former Mexican citizens and dozens of native peoples greatly heightened old questions of citizenship, while its new international borders brought opportunities and problems that continue to profit and bedevil the nation. That last point is illustrated by a brief consideration of the United States’ turn toward the Pacific world after 1848, including how Pacific dreams inspired southern passions for connections to the far coast during the prewar years.

In any case, a satisfying narrative of those crucial years is possible only when we see South, North, and West in play together in reconstructing the nation.