Managing Emancipation: Land, Labor, and the Reconstruction of the American State

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to understand the impact of Emancipation on the development of the American federal state in the mid-19th century. Although political scientists and historians have identified the Emancipation Proclamation as a transformative moment in the history of the United States, there has been relatively little attention paid to the effects of Emancipation on institutional development and the expansion of state power. Drawing on a wide range of primary source archival research, I show how the federal government used land and labor policies to manage the process of Emancipation and grow the power of the central government. I argue the origins of Reconstruction and, by extension, much of the contemporary US political and economic order lies in the policies enacted to manage the process of Emancipation. My research shows how the complex interactions between freed Black workers, federal officials, and white employers fundamentally reshaped racialized labor and property relations in the aftermath of Emancipation. Lastly, I center the role of emancipated Black people in this process by showing how freedpeople contested state-building processes through non-formal avenues of political power (labor strikes, land claims, federal bureaucrats, etc.) to advance their visions of freedom. In short, this dissertation argues that the modern American state cannot be fully understood without attending to its origins in the Civil War and Emancipation.