Content and Resource Center
Our Resources section provides access to bibliography, background materials, time lines, milestones of the period and many photos and images. The list will be organic as we collect stories, images, and other appropriate information.
We welcome items that may be useful to others and hope you will share them with us and those using this resource page. Please submit information to: info@secondfoundingofamerica.org for review and inclusion as additional resources.
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To hear more from historians about their thoughts on the Reconstruction Era, click here. This 2016 C-SPAN panel was a part of the Lincoln Forum Symposium.
Commemorating Post-Civil War Reconstruction in National Parks
Historians talked at the American Historical Association Annual meeting in January 2018, as recorded on C-Span, about the challenges of interpreting the post-Civil War period in the national parks, what it takes to create a National Historic Park, and about the first Reconstruction-Era monument in Beaufort, South Carolina.
Click on the picture to the left to watch the video.
Why Study Reconstruction?
The Reconstruction Era was a pivotal moment in American history. Civil rights were set in motion as Americans grappled to rebuild after the division and trauma of the Civil War, raising essential questions about freedom and democracy. Video is from the website Facing History And Ourselves.
Click on the picture to the
left to watch the video.
In 2019, The Reconstruction National Monument was renamed to The Reconstruction Era National Historical Park and Network. To learn more, click here.
Reconstruction Era National Historical Park
"The Reconstruction era, 1861-1898, was the historic period in which the United States grappled with the question of how to integrate millions of newly freed African Americans into social, political, economic and labor systems. The historical events that transpired in Beaufort County, South Carolina, make it an ideal place to tell stories of experimentation, transformation, hope, accomplishment, and disappointment."
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-National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior, Reconstruction Era National Historical Park