Placeholder Image

字幕表 動画を再生する

  • - [Kim] How do you define freedom?

  • Stop for a minute and picture what it means to be free.

  • What comes into your mind?

  • Traveling wherever you please,

  • having enough money to do what you want,

  • or is freedom better defined by what it's not?

  • Not having anyone telling you what to do,

  • not being in prison?

  • Freedom is a core aspect of US national identity,

  • but if someone gave you box labeled Contents: Freedom,

  • what would you expect to find inside?

  • This was the question that the United States faced

  • during Reconstruction, the period following the Civil War,

  • when the US government, Southern state governments,

  • and African Americans attempted to negotiate

  • a new social and political order for the South.

  • But what African Americans expected to find in the box

  • labeled Freedom was very different

  • from what their former enslavers wanted to put there.

  • Was freedom just the absence of slavery,

  • as most white Southerners believed,

  • or did it imply citizenship, political power,

  • and economic self-sufficiency?

  • Try to solve this dilemma,

  • Congress passed, and the states ratified,

  • three new Constitutional amendments

  • during the Reconstruction era, the 13th Amendment,

  • which ended the system of slavery in 1865,

  • the 14th Amendment, which extended citizenship

  • to all persons born or naturalized in the United States

  • in 1868, and the 15th Amendment,

  • which gave black men the right to vote in 1870.

  • So in just five years,

  • African Americans in the South went from personal property

  • to full civic participants, at least in theory.

  • In reality, how different were definitions

  • of freedom, citizenship, and democracy

  • before and after Reconstruction?

  • To really answer this question,

  • we need to examine continuity and change

  • in the Reconstruction era.

  • What stayed the same and what changed

  • in each of these three areas

  • following the passage of the Reconstruction Amendments?

  • Okay, first let's look at continuities and changes

  • in the definition of freedom.

  • Before the end of slavery,

  • African Americans had neither economic nor physical freedom.

  • They didn't have control of their bodies

  • or of their labor.

  • The pass system kept them from moving freely,

  • and slavery itself meant that they couldn't choose

  • where to work or earn money from their own work.

  • So how much did their physical and economic freedom

  • change after the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery?

  • Well, their economic self-sufficiency

  • went through some ups and downs.

  • Most African Americans believed

  • that their years of unpaid toil entitled them

  • to land of their own.

  • US Army general William Tecumseh Sherman

  • redistributed Confederate territory

  • on the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina

  • to black families, who farmed there for a few years

  • until Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson,

  • gave all confiscated land back to its former owners.

  • Instead, most black farmers became sharecroppers,

  • renting a portion of a white landowner's farm

  • in exchange for part of the crop yield.

  • This gave black farmers a lot more freedom

  • over their own work,

  • since they didn't have to work under an overseer.

  • But economically, sharecropping kept black farmers,

  • as well as small white farmers,

  • in an endless cycle of debt and poverty.

  • After the 13th Amendment, most Southern state governments

  • attempted to limit the physical freedom

  • of African Americans as well,

  • with statutes known as the Black Codes.

  • Many of these codes defined anyone

  • who wasn't under a labor contract as a vagrant

  • who could be arrested and have their labor sold.

  • Later, segregation limited the physical freedom

  • of where Southern African Americans could go

  • and what they could do.

  • Laws like the Black Codes,

  • which so obviously attempted to institute slavery

  • by another name, led Congress to pass the 14th Amendment,

  • which defined a US citizen

  • as anyone born or naturalized in the United States

  • and specifically prevented states

  • from infringing upon the rights of citizens.

  • Before the Civil War, citizenship was exclusively

  • the privilege of white Americans.

  • Non-white immigrants weren't eligible to become US citizens,

  • and the 1857 Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott

  • declared that no African Americans could be citizens at all.

  • The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868,

  • led to a huge increase in the number of US citizens

  • and it decoupled citizenship from whiteness.

  • Even the American-born children of Asian immigrants

  • were citizens.

  • But the Supreme Court defined the 14th Amendment

  • very narrowly in the late 19th century, permitting many laws

  • that discriminated on the basis of race.

  • Only in the 20th century would the 14th Amendment

  • become an important tool for civil rights activists

  • to break down segregation.

  • Lastly, the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870,

  • extended the right to vote to black men.

  • In the years leading up to the Civil War,

  • with few exceptions, only white man had the right to vote.

  • The 15th Amendment radically redefined the terms

  • of American democracy.

  • During Reconstruction, more than 2,000 African Americans

  • held public office, including two US senators.

  • But there were limits

  • to this new broader definition of democracy.

  • First, it didn't include women,

  • much to the frustration of the women's suffrage movement.

  • Then, as the federal government ceased to intervene

  • to protect black citizens in the South in the late 1870s,

  • Southern state governments imposed a range

  • of voter suppression tactics

  • to effectively bar African Americans from voting,

  • which then reduced the likelihood

  • of black politicians winning office.

  • Not until the 1960s

  • would African American voter registration

  • once again reach Reconstruction-era levels.

  • So how much did the Reconstruction Amendments

  • change definitions of freedom, citizenship, and democracy?

  • Well, after the amendments,

  • African Americans were free to own their own bodies

  • and labor, but that was about it.

  • The 14th and 15th Amendments led to short-lived revolutions

  • in the concept of citizenship and in voting rights,

  • but those rights had all but evaporated

  • by the end of the century.

  • Nevertheless, although they didn't have much of an impact

  • in the short term, these amendments would lay the foundation

  • for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.

- [Kim] How do you define freedom?

字幕と単語

ワンタップで英和辞典検索 単語をクリックすると、意味が表示されます

B1 中級

復興の失敗|APアメリカ史|カーンアカデミー (Failure of Reconstruction | AP US History | Khan Academy)

  • 4 0
    林宜悉 に公開 2021 年 01 月 14 日
動画の中の単語