The Radical Republicans Move Forward with Reconstruction
At a Freedmen's Convention (a large political meeting made up largely of former slaves) held in Arkansas soon after the end of the Civil War (1861–65), an African American leader named William H. Grey (1829–1888) spoke about his people's newfound independence. As quoted in Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery, Grey declared, "We have thrown off the mask, hereafter to do our own talking, and to use all legitimate means to get and to enjoy our political privileges. We don't want anybody to swear for us or to vote for us; we want to exercise these privileges for ourselves."
The spirit present in Grey's words coexisted with both the jubilation that African Americans of this period felt and their worries about the challenges that they faced. This mix of forces had been unleashed by the war's outcome: a victory for the Union (the federal government) over the Confederacy, the eleven Southern states that had seceded or separated themselves from the United States in order to protect the traditions of the South. These traditions centered around the enslavement of four million black people, who had been brought since the seventeenth century from Africa andforced to work in the fields and homes of white Southerners.
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