May 31, 1870- The First Reinforcement Act

A cartoon threatening that the KKK will lynch scalawags (left) and carpetbaggers (right) on March 4, 1869. Tuscaloosa, Alabama Independent Monitor, Sept. 1, 1868. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kkk-carpetbagger-cartoon.jpg

In the South after the Civil War, the Union’s victory was followed by terrorism.

The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1865 in Tennessee by Confederate Veterans. It was only one of many secret terrorist groups that formed immediately after the end of the war. While many groups had chapters in different states, none of them exercised much central control. The groups formed and were directed by local members resisting Republican political domination and suppressing the political, social, and economic freedom of newly freed Black people in their towns and cities. The Klan became infamous as “midnight riders,” raiding homes, burning property, and often murdering Black and White people who challenged the old White Supremacist Democratic Party order.

The original klansmen wore hoods and disguises while conducting attacks, but they were not very uniform. The white hoods and burning crosses associated with the KKK were part of the revival movement in the 1910s and 20s.

Mississippi Ku-Klux members in the disguises in which they were captured. Artist Unknown. Harper's Weekly January 27, 1872. Public Domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mississippi_ku_klux.jpg

This political violence surged throughout the 1860s, leading to the First and Second Enforcement Acts (1870, 1871), and the Ku Klux Klan Act (1871). These acts authorized the President and Congress to use military powers to enforce the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments (The Reconstruction Amendments) passed between 1865-70. These amendments codified the citizenship and political rights of Black Americans. In reality, US troops were needed to ensure Black voters could participate in elections or hold offices they’d been elected to. Where there was no military presence, vigilantes like the Klan were largely successful in suppressing the rights of Blacks and the authority of Republican politicians and their allies.

Even after the Klan was effectively suppressed in the 1870s, political violence against Black voters, office holders, and jurors was endemic to the Southern United States and much of the North. Groups such as the White League, the Red Shirts, and others used terrorism to intimidate voters and oust Black and Republican politicians and sheriffs.

Ultimately, most United States’ leaders were uncomfortable using their political and military power to defend Black people from White southerners and eventually withdrew from enforcing the Constitution in the South by the end of the 1870s. It would not be until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the US government, goaded by hundreds of thousand of activists risking their lives, would again attempt to use its power to secure Americans’ constitutional rights in the South, and to dismantle the systems of segregation throughout the North and the West.

Sources:

The Enforcement Act of 1870- Blackpast

The Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871- US Senate

Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871- National Constitution Center

Documenting Reconstruction Violence- Equal Justice Initiative

HST 116- The American Revolution

Dr. Joanne B. Freeman

The American Revolution and the Revolutionary War are difficult events to teach. First of all, most treatments fail to establish sufficient context for Europeans in the Americas, the various cultures of the different British colonies and how they related to each other, as well as their mother country. 

The French and Indian War (1754-1763), a part of the 7 Years War between Britain and France that set off conflicts between several European powers throughout the continent and numerous colonial sites around the globe, is too often glossed over. 

Finally, as with many historical subjects, there is so much myth and political rhetoric heaped upon the actual history of these events that it can be arduous to find information that has not been sensationalized and oversimplified.

Joanne B. Freeman’s course on the topic, available as a podcast by Open Yale Courses, begins by clarifying that the Revolutionary War and the American Revolution were related, but distinct things. The lectures that make up the course are detailed, but listenable. They do an excellent job of presenting the subject to a modern audience by delving into the contexts of place, people, and events. Freeman presents at a brisk pace, but repeats and emphasizes points that provide greater clarity. 

Figures of the Revolutionary Era that often suffer from dull, overly-reverent descriptions are examined with diligence, humor, and a critical eye. Historians often rely too heavily on dates, figures, and theoretical analysis without doing the historical-imaginative work of painting a portrait of the past that gives their audience a rich sense of time and place, allowing them to see historical figures as flesh and blood people, and events as chaotic contingencies, rather than rigid inevitabilities. 

Rather than teaching the American Revolution as a propaganda exercise meant to instill national pride, or countercultural antipathy, Freeman presents it as a phenomenon to be investigated culturally and politically, and related to earlier and later eras, including our own.

Sources:

The American Revolution- Open Yale Courses

Joanne B. Freeman

Matoaka's Story/Part 9 Matoaka and Pocahontas

The Mattaponi River, upstream of its confluence with the South River. Antepenultimate, CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mattaponi_River_20170218.jpg

Everyone knows the name Pocahontas, but her story is usually remembered in pieces. Most people will guess that Pocahontas saved John Smith from being executed by her father and that they were married, bringing peace between the English and the Powhatan Nation. This is the residue of a more detailed myth, that Pocahontas recognized the superiority of the English society and enthusiastically chose to marry an Englishman, convert to Christianity, and renounce her own people. This legend was created to glorify one culture, and justify the conquest of another. 

As the English colonies that would become the United States grew, they created laws that helped them control Native, Black, and mixed-race people. These laws excluded them from voting, from juries, from owning property, and above all, from socializing with or marrying White people. It is darkly ironic then that the descendents of John Rolfe would long celebrate their relation to Pocahontas, the “Indian Princess.” As wealthy Virginia elites, they were immune to the stigma of Indian blood that marked so many in their community as outsiders and subhumans. 

The true story of Matoaka is short and tragic.

Matoaka’s father, Wahunsenaca, made Captain John Smith a werowance in an attempt to assimilate the English into the Powhatan Nation. She was a frequent visitor to Jamestown when she was between 10-13, accompanying delegations that brought food to the colonists. She learned English from Smith and others, probably most from the English boys left with her people to learn their language and customs. As relations between the Powhatan and the English soured, she became a target for abduction. She married a young Patawomeck man named Kakoum and lived with his people in the north of Tsenacomoco. They had a son together. In 1613 she was kidnapped by Captain Samuel Argall. 

Argall coerced the Patawomeck werowance into helping him and demanded as her ransom, the return of all English weapons and prisoners from Wahunsenaca, as well as large amounts of corn to feed the fort. Though Wahunsenaca agreed to these terms, the colony’s governor, Thomas Gates found excuses to claim it was not paid and kept Matoaka prisoner. After an initial captivity in Jamestown, Matoaka was sent to Henrico where the Reverend Alex Whitaker instructed her in Christianity and urged her to convert. The tobacco planter John Rolfe assisted Whitaker with teaching her English here. Rolfe claimed to have fallen in love with Matoaka and proposed to marry her. The colony’s governors forwarded his proposal to her father, while also threatening war with him if their demands for a regular supply of food were not met. Wahunsenaca consented to the marriage, hoping to secure his daughter’s safety and a beneficial peace with the English. Matoaka and John Rolfe had a son named Thomas. Most sources claim the child was Rolfe’s, conceived soon after their marriage. However the Mattaponi Oral History records that Matoaka revealed to her sister she was raped soon after being taken hostage. The Mattaponi therefore suspect that Thomas Rolfe was not John Rolfe’s biological son, and that his marriage to Matoaka may have been orchestrated by the colony’s governors. 

Once the tentative peace had been agreed to, Matoaka converted to Christianity, took the name Rebecca, and married Rolfe. Hostilities continued to erupt. Colonists raided for food in lean times, and took land Native people had cleared for crops along the riverbanks as opportunities arose. Those who strayed from the forts were often robbed and murdered. Outright war, though, was averted. 

In 1616, the Virginia Company sent Matoaka and Rolfe to England to publicize the colony and present an image of peaceful relations with “civilizable” Indians. Matoaka and her entourage became minor celebrities in London. She was entertained in the homes of English elites, met King James I and Queen Anne, attended a Royal Masque, and had a last meeting with Captain John Smith, who she scolded for breaking the bond he had entered into with her Father in 1607 when he was made werowance of the English.

As the party prepared to set sail back to Virginia, Matoaka became ill. Most sources note only that Matoaka began feeling ill, some say it was only her, others that all of the Powhatans were suffering from sickness. The Mattaponi Oral History records that Matoaka told her sister that she believed she was poisoned while dining with Rolfe and Captain Argall, and that she died on the ship. Most sources claim she died at an inn in the town of Gravesend, where the ship stopped. All agree she was buried at St. George’s church nearby.

It is tempting, especially this far removed from the events, to rewrite Matoaka’s story yet again. To cast her as a shrewd victim of circumstance, who attempted to sacrifice herself to bring peace between her people and an invading tribe. However, no one can know Matoaka’s thoughts, or her motivations. The little documentation we have of her life comes from other, mostly European, sources. Filling the empty spaces in that story with drama and speculation without acknowledging the lies and uncertainties does her memory further disservice. 

Camille Townsend ends her book, “Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma,” with a sobering thesis that I believe avoids the common overreaches of most histories: 

“The destruction of Virginia’s Indian tribes was not a question of miscommunication and missed opportunities. White settlers wanted the Indians’ land and had the strength to take it; the Indians could not live without their land. It is unfair to imply that somehow Pocahontas, or Queen Cockacoeske, or others like them could have done more, could have played their cards differently, and so have saved their people. The gambling game they were forced to play was a dangerous one, and they had one hand, even two, tied behind their backs at all times. It is important to do them the honor of believing that they did their best. They all made decisions as well as they could, managing in what were often nearly unbearable situations. There is nothing they could have done that would have dramatically changed the outcome: a new nation was going to be built on their people’s destruction– a destruction that would be either partial or complete. They did not fail. On the contrary, theirs is a story of heroism as it exists in the real world, not in epic tales. Their dwindling people did survive, against all odds.”

Sources:

Images of a Legend - PBS
Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend- National Parks Service

Matoaka’s Story 

Bibliography

Custalow, Linwood “Little Bear” and Angela L. Daniel “Silver Star.” The True Story of Pocahontas: The Other Side of History. Downloadable ebook. Chicago: Fulcrum Publishing, 2007.

Downs, Kristina. “Mirrored Archetypes: The Contrasting Cultural Roles of La Malinche and Pocahontas.” Western Folklore 67, no. 4 (2008): 397–414.

Freund, Virginia, and Louis B. Wright. The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania (1612), by William Strachey, Gent. Hakluyt Society, Second Series, v. 103. London: Taylor and Francis, 2011.

Gilliam, Charles Edgar. “His Dearest Daughter’s Names.” The William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 21, no. 3 (1941): 239–42.

Hamor, Ralph, Thomas Harriot, George Percy, and John Rolf. Virginia; Four Personal Narratives. Research Library of Colonial Americana. New York: Arno Press, 1972.

Heuvel, Lisa. “The True Story of Pocahontas: The Other Side of History. By Linwood ‘Little Bear’ Custalow and Angela L. Daniel ‘Silver Star.’” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 31, no. 3 (June 1, 2007). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8pq8q3m8.

Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught between Cultures in Early Virginia. New York: New York University Press, 2019.

Kupperman, Karen Ordahl, and Karen O. Kupperman. Captain John Smith: A Select Edition of His Writings. Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia Ser. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

LeMaster, Michelle. “Pocahontas: (De)Constructing an American Myth.” Edited by Camilla Townsend, Helen C. Rountree, Paula Gunn Allen, and David A. Price. The William and Mary Quarterly 62, no. 4 (2005): 774–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/3491451.

Lopenzina, Drew. “The Wedding of Pocahontas and John Rolfe: How to Keep the Thrill Alive after Four Hundred Years of Marriage.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 26, no. 4 (2014): 59–77. https://doi.org/10.5250/studamerindilite.26.4.0059.

Rountree, Helen C. “Powhatan Indian Women: The People Captain John Smith Barely Saw.” Ethnohistory 45, no. 1 (1998): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.2307/483170.

Strachey, William, Silvester Jourdain, Louis B. Wright, and Alden T. Vaughan. A Voyage to Virginia in 1609: Two Narratives. 2nd ed. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013.

“The True Story of Pocahontas-C-SPAN.Org.” Accessed February 8, 2024. https://www.c-span.org/video/?202747-2/the-true-story-pocahontas.

Townsend, Camilla. “Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma.” New York: Hill and Wang, 2004.

Wood, Karenne. “Prisoners of History: Pocahontas, Mary Jemison, and the Poetics of an American Myth.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 28, no. 1 (2016): 73–82. https://doi.org/10.5250/studamerindilite.28.1.0073.

Working, Lauren. Review of Review of Pocahontas and the English Boys: Caught between Cultures in Early Virginia, by Karen Ordahl Kupperman. The William and Mary Quarterly 77, no. 1 (2020): 138–43.

The United States' Thanksgiving

Thanksgivings were originally English Puritan religious festivals that would be declared for various reasons. New England pilgrims declared them after their arrival in the Americas, the end of a brutal drought, and other major events. Oddly, it’s not certain if the feast declared by governor William Bradford to celebrate Plymouth Colony’s first successful corn harvest was among these recurring Thanksgiving celebrations. However, this feast in which the colonists invited their Native allies, the Wampanoags, led by “Chief“ Massasoit, provided the basis of the story of the United States’ “first” Thanksgiving.

George Washington made the first proclamation of a national day of Thanksgiving on November 26, 1789 to celebrate the successful revolution, particularly the enacting of the Constitution which gave the nation of disparate states a solid political foundation. Several of the following presidents made similar Thanksgiving proclamations, but the tradition faded out after James Madison. 

Sarah Josepha Hale

The writer Sarah Josepha Hale and others petitioned for a national Thanksgiving holiday repeatedly starting in 1827. The holiday these White Protestant writers had in mind was more national than religious, and it sought to focus the holiday around the “Woman’s sphere” (cooking, homemaking, crafting, etc.) Many have criticized that it was also a scheme to institutionalize Protestant Anglo-Saxons as the cultural hegemons in the face of rising Catholic immigration, Black emancipation, etc. It didn’t happen until 1863. 

During the Civil War Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November as a national day of Thanksgiving. The year began with the Emancipation Proclamation and that July the Battle of Gettysburg dealt both sides enormous losses. The proclamation was actually penned by Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward.

(Partial quote)

“…Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

Right Hand and Life Mask of Abe Lincoln- Leonard Wells Volk, Augustus Saint-Gaudins

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.

And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.” 

Right Hand and Life Mask of Abe Lincoln- Leonard Wells Volk, Augustus Saint-Gaudins

Sources:

Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation- Olivia Waxman, Time.com

Lincoln and Thanksgiving- National Park Service 

Thanksgiving 2022- The History Channel

Wills, Anne Blue. Pilgrims and Progress: How Magazines made Thanksgiving. Church History. March 2003 Vol. 72, no. 1. Pp. 138-158. Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4146807