S4 E4: The Second Revolution

Scene on Radio: Capitalism

Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University

Society & Culture, Audiodoc, Radio, Documentary, Stories

4.9 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2020

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After the Civil War, a surprising coalition tried to remake the United States into a real multiracial democracy for the first time. Reconstruction, as the effort was called, brought dramatic change to America. For a while.

Reported and produced by John Biewen, with series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. The series script editor is Loretta Williams. Interviews with Victoria Smalls, Brent Morris, Eric Foner, Kidada Williams, Bobby Donaldson, and Edward Baptist.

Music by Algiers, John Erik Kaada, Eric Neveux, and Lucas Biewen. Music consulting and production help from Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.

Photo: Historian Bobby Donaldson of the University of South Carolina, at the South Carolina State House, Columbia, SC. Photo by John Biewen.

Transcript

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0:00.0	A content warning, this episode includes descriptions of intense violence.
0:07.0	In 1829, the Black American writer David Walker published his book, An Appeal to the Colored
0:14.6	Citizens of the World.
0:16.4	The whites have always been in unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious, and bloodthirsty
0:24.0	set of beings.
0:25.4	Andrews Appeal was one of the most radical abolitionist statements in Antibela, America.
0:31.3	He condemned the people who called themselves white for their cruel commitment to enslaving
0:36.3	black people, and he called on enslaved people to revolt against their masters.
0:42.3	Walker also suggested white people deserved punishment from on high.
0:47.1	I declare it does appear to me, as though some nations think God is asleep, or that he
0:53.9	made the Africans for nothing else but to dig their minds and work their farms, or they
1:00.1	cannot believe history, sacred or profane.
1:03.9	I ask every man who has a heart and is blessed with the privilege of believing is not God
1:10.2	a God of justice to all his creatures.
1:15.8	Other leading abolitionists of the 19th century, including Frederick Douglass and John Brown,
1:21.6	voiced some version of this idea that slavery violated God's law or natural law, and white
1:28.8	Americans would someday pay for this great sin.
1:33.0	It took the cataclysm of the Civil War to bring a white American president to a similar
1:38.5	view.
1:39.7	It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God's assistance in ringing
1:45.0	their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but Abraham Lincoln gave his second
1:50.3	inaugural address on March 4, 1865, as he started his new term as president.
	...

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