User:Hydrangeans/draft of Greater Reconstruction

Greater Reconstruction
mid 19th century – late 19th century
Location	United States
Including	Civil War era Reconstruction era
Key events	Mexican–American War American Civil War American Indian Wars Dawes Act Chinese Exclusion Act Spanish–American War
Chronology Antebellum – Age of Jackson Gilded Age – Progressive Era

The Greater Reconstruction refers to a period of intersecting racial tensions, westward settler colonialism, ideas about republican citizenship, and expanding federal power in the history of the United States during the nineteenth century. Beginning with the United States' major territorial expansion through victory in the Mexican–American War, the federal government of the United States clashed with several demographic groups over questions of political sovereignty and citizenship. Americans and their governments debated who could belong in a country that was increasingly diverse. White Americans and government leaders often believed that inclusion in the United States required conforming to Euro-American cultural norms they considered prerequisites for republican citizenship and were willing to empower the government to enforce such, even with force and violence.

Historiography

Elliott West coined and introduced the concept of the Greater Reconstruction in 2002 as part of a speech he delivered to the Western History Association as its president that year. He argued that the history of the Western United States was connected to how the American Civil War and Reconstruction era raised questions about citizenship and that the region was at the center of the nation's history of race relations and state power. A series editor's introduction to West's 2023 Continental Reckoning called the Greater Reconstruction concept "the most notable historiographical idea advanced about the American West in the twenty-first century". In 2024, a Western Historical Quarterly article described a "Greater Reconstruction historiographical turn".

West argued that the Greater Reconstruction began when the United States' westward territorial acquisitions in the Mexican–American War "triggered an American racial crisis" from the perspective of racist Euro-Americans. Historians have proposed a variety of endings for the Greater Reconstruction, including the defeat of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce in the Nez Perce War in 1877, the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the passage of the Dawes Act in 1887, and the prosecution of the Spanish–American War in 1898.

History

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As the federal government's power increased as part of the Greater Reconstruction, it used this power to extend rights of citizenship to more people, in particular the formerly enslaved, through the Fourteenth Amendment and Civil Rights Act of 1866, but these new federal protections overtly excluded American Indians from citizenship.

Bibliography

Books

• Blackhawk, Ned (2023). The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U. S. History. The Henry Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-24405-2.
• Dean, Adam Wesley (2015). An Agrarian Republic: Farming, Antislavery Politics, and Nature Parks in the Civil War Era. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-4696-1991-0.
• Hahn, Steven (2016). A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830–1910. Penguin History of the United States. Viking Penguin. ISBN 978-0670024681.
• Kerstetter, Todd M. (2015). Inspiration and Innovation: Religion in the American West. John Wiley & Sons. doi:10.1002/9781394261338. ISBN 978-1-118-84838-8.
• Kiser, William S. (2022). Illusions of Empire: The Civil War and Reconstruction in the U. S.–Mexico Borderlands. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-5351-1. JSTOR j.ctv1f45qw0.
• Paddison, Joshua (2012). American Heathens: Religion, Race, and Reconstruction in California. Western Histories. University of California Press and Huntington Library. ISBN 978-0-52028-905-5.
• Pierce, Jason E. (2016). Making the White Man's West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West. University Press of Colorado. ISBN 978-1-60732-395-2. JSTOR j.ctt19jcg63.
• West, Elliott (2009). The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story. Pivotal Moments in American History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-513675-3.
• West, Elliott (2023). Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion. History of the American West. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-1496233585.
• White, Richard (2017). The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896. Oxford History of the United States. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199735815.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)

Chapters

• Arenson, Adam (2015). "Introduction". Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States. University of California Press. pp. 1–14. doi:10.1525/9780520959576-001. ISBN 978-0-520-28378-7.
• Downs, Gregory P. (2015). "Three Faces of Sovereignty: Governing Confederate, Mexican, and Indian Texas in the Civil War Era". Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States. University of California Press. pp. 118–138. doi:10.1525/9780520959576-007. ISBN 978-0-520-28378-7.
• Emberton, Carole (2015). "Axes of Empire: Race, Region, and the 'Greater Reconstruction' of Federal Authority After Emancipation". In Link, William A.; Broomall, James J. (eds.). Rethinking American Emancipation: Legacies of Slavery and the Quest for Black Freedom. Cambridge Studies on the American South. Cambridge University Press. pp. 119–144. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139680998.006. ISBN 978-1-107-07303-6.
• Etulain, Richard (2023). "Series Editor's Introduction". Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion. History of the American West. University of Nebraska Press. pp. xiii–xiv. ISBN 978-1496233585.
• Genetin-Pilawa, C. Joseph (2015). "Ely S. Parker and the Paradox of Reconstruction Politics in Indian Country". In Downs, Gregory P.; Masur, Kate (eds.). The World the Civil War Made. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 183–205. doi:10.5149/northcarolina/9781469624181.001.0001. ISBN 9781469624181.
• Green, Michael S. (2019). "Eastern and Western Empire: Thaddeus Stevens and the Greater Reconstruction". In Birkner, Michael J.; Miller, Randall M.; Quist, John W. (eds.). The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era. Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil War. Louisiana State University Press. pp. 215–236. ISBN 978-0-8071-7081-6 – via Project Muse.
• Paddison, Joshua (2015). "Race, Religion, and Naturalization: How the West Shaped Citizenship Debates in the Reconstruction Congress". In Arenson, Adam; Graybill, Andrew R. (eds.). Civil War Wests: Testing the Limits of the United States. University of California Press. pp. 181–201. doi:10.1525/9780520959576-010. ISBN 978-0-520-28378-7.

Journals

• Aron, Stephen (Winter 2023). "Elliott West. Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion". California History. 100 (4): 113–115. doi:10.1525/ch.2023.100.4.113.
• Atkinson, Evelyn (March 2020). "Slaves, Coolies, and Shareholders: Corporations Claim the Fourteenth Amendment". Journal of the Civil War Era. 10 (1): 54–80. doi:10.1353/cwe.2020.0003. JSTOR 26888072.
• Hämäläinen, Pekka (December 2016). "Reconstructing the Great Plains: The Long Struggle for Sovereignty and Dominance in the Heart of the Continent". Journal of the Civil War Era. 6 (4): 481–509. doi:10.1353/cwe.2016.0070. JSTOR 26070453.
• Kiser, William S. (July 2023). "Greater Reconstruction in Historiographical Perspective". Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 127 (1): 108–113. doi:10.1353/swh.2023.a900771.
• Martin, Nicole (Summer 2024). "The Indian, Chinese, and Mormon Questions: The American Home and Reconstruction Politics in the West". Pacific Historical Review. 93 (3): 445–474. doi:10.1525/phr.2024.93.3.445.
• Smith, Stacey L. (December 2016). "Beyond North and South: Putting the West in the Civil War and Reconstruction". Journal of the Civil War Era. 6 (4): 566–591. doi:10.1353/cwe.2016.0073. JSTOR 26070456.
• Suárez, Camille (Winter 2024). "Junta Democrática: Californios and Reconstruction in California". Western Historical Quarterly. 55 (4): 271–290. doi:10.1093/whq/whae042.
• Thomas, Brook (March 2017). "The Unfinished Task of Grounding Reconstruction's Promise". Journal of the Civil War Era. 7 (1): 16–38. doi:10.1353/cwe.2017.0011. JSTOR 26070488.
• Waite, Kevin (July 2023). "The Brittle West: Secession and Separatism in the Southwest Borderlands during the Civil War Era". Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 127 (1): 8–28. doi:10.1353/swh.2023.a900767.
• West, Elliott (Spring 2003). "Reconstructing Race". Western Historical Quarterly. 34 (1): 6–26. doi:10.2307/25047206.
• West, Elliott (July 2023b). "'It Is Hard to Tell Who Is Who and What Is What': An Introduction to the Southwestern Historical Quarterly's Special Issue on Greater Reconstruction in the Southwestern Borderlands". Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 127 (1): 1–7. doi:10.1353/swh.2023.a900766.

Web

• Stern, Alexandra. "Reconstructing Approaches to America's Indian Problem: Indian Policy in the Late Nineteenth Century". U. S. History Scene. Retrieved November 2, 2024.
• Walfred, Michele (April 1, 2014). "'Every Dog' (No Distinction of Color) 'Has His Day' 1879". Illustrating Chinese Exclusion: Thomas Nast's Cartoons of Chinese Americans.