Quotes About Reconstruction

Because they failed to come to grips with the plantation itself, the leaders of Presidential Reconstruction lacked a coherent vision of Southern progress.

Issues that agitate American politics—who is an American citizen and what rights come along with citizenship, the relative powers of the national government and the states, affirmative action, the relationship between political and economic democracy, the proper response to terrorism—are Reconstruction questions.

the emergence during the Civil War and Reconstruction of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and a new set of purposes, including an unprecedented commitment to the ideal of a national citizenship whose equal rights belonged to all Americans regardless of race.

Reconstruction revisionism arose in tandem with and provided a usable past for the civil rights movement. More than most historical subjects, Reconstruction history matters. Whatever the ebb and flow of historical interpretations, I hope we never lose sight of the fact that something very important for the future of our society was taking place during Reconstruction.

As with buildings, it's easier to repair superstructure on top of a solid foundation than it is to replace the foundations without trashing the superstructure.

time, a reconstruction of the event according to an artificial and abstract duration: dramatic duration. There is not a single one of these commonly accepted assumptions of the film spectacle that is not challenged by neorealism.

The influx of Civil War refugees had significance for the future evolution of Texas culture and politics in the decades after the war. The descendants of the refugees would be among the most embittered, and hardcore in their opposition to the post-war rule of the Union Army and the Reconstruction policies of the national government.

The traumatic experience of the Civil War and its aftermath in the 19th century was the incubator of Christian fundamentalism in 20th century America. The agony of the Civil War had a devastating impact on subsequent generations of Southerners, many of whom carried the burden and promise of their Scots-Irish heritage.

As I said, I'm an unfinished man reassembling the pieces of a broken world, and I have asked you to be a witness because you would never judge me as harsly as I judge myself.

We must stop posing as victims of the West and behaving negatively towards the West. We must participate with the West on an equal footing in the reconstruction of the world.

Too many times, the international community has not prepared the post-conflict period in time.

I started by looking at what others had done before me. You see, over the years there have been attempts by many different people to reconstruct the chariot.

As a former minority leader who became the first Republican Speaker of the House in Florida since Reconstruction, I know that leadership is not an easy task.

Gen. Banks has issued an order for the instruction of Negro children. Schoolhouses are to be built or rented and Teachers hired for this purpose, and the farmers and planters are to pay the Taxes in support of this.

What we call historical memory is a creature of time and place. Emotional and political needs of the present intersect with past events. For memory, like perception, can never be simply factual. All our memories are reconstructions.

You can't patch a hull when the whole boat's burned.

The slightest alteration can cause dramatic changes. That's what happened to you. The damage was physical. It's as though blocks were rearranged, the physical structure no longer what it was.

At a point where the destruction widened out, leaving a vast field of broken lintels and cornerstones, some GIs had posted a sign with a quote from Hitler: "Gebt mir fünf Jahre und Ihr werdet Deutschland nicht wiedererkennen." Below was the English translation: "Give me five years & you will not recognize Germany again.

Several times in his life he had felt an intense desire to start over, to somehow turn back the clock of his life to a point where he might, if he were careful, avoid the many mistakes he had made the first time around.

We all build upon our ruins.

Everybody knows that orthopaedic science provides beautiful false noses for those who have lost their noses naturally or as the result of an operation.

As everyone knows, it is a thousand times easier to reconstruct the facts of what happened at a certain time than its intellectual atmosphere. The atmosphere is reflected not in official events but, most conspicuously, in small, personal episodes...

confronted with a choice between the pollution of Maurras and the pollution of tourism, the intellectuals chose to remake the emptiness rather than abide with the many.

The French government employs teams of démineurs, roving bomb-disposal specialists, who respond to calls when villagers discover shells; they collect and destroy 900 tons of unexploded munitions each year. More than 630 French démineurs have died in the line of duty since 1946. Like those shells, the First World War itself has remained in our lives, below the surface, because we live in a world that was so much formed by it and by the industrialized total warfare it inaugurated.