Northern California during Reconstruction-era Archives

Jennie Carter was an esteemed Nevada City essayist who wrote and published articles in a San Francisco newspaper between 1867-1874.

She was a free black woman born in 1830 (or 1831). *Free people of color first arrived on the North American continent in the French territories and with the Spanish and Portuguese. They were highly educated and successful in business.

To gain a deeper understanding of Jennie’s opinions and writing, it’s important to know where she was living before moving to Nevada County and to understand what might have triggered her relocation.

In Jennie’s lifetime, the following events occurred;

1846 Mexican American War
Westward Expansion – Manifest Destiny
1849 California Gold Rush
1850 Fugitive Slave Laws were passed to provide the return of escaped slaves (a danger for free blacks – they could be captured/kidnapped and entered into slavery)
Tensions mount between Northern and Southern states
1860 Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States

** Historians suggest this is when Jennie and her first husband, Reverand Correll, a Campbellite minister, relocated to Grass Valley, California from New Orleans, Louisiana. [Jennie married Dennis Carter in Nevada City after Reverand Correll’s death.]

January 1861 Louisiana votes to secede from the Union
March 1861 Louisiana vows allegiance to the Confederate States of America
April 12th, 1861 Civil War begins
January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring “that all persons held as slaves within the rebel states “are, and henceforward shall be free”
April 1865 Civil War ends — one week later Abraham Lincoln is assassinated
December 1865 Congress ratifies the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery
1867 Congress passes the 14th Amendment granting citizenship and civil liberties to freed slaves
1869 Congress passes the 15th Amendment granting African American men the right to vote
1870 African American men in California gain voting rights when 2/3 of the states ratify the 15th Amendment

Social movements taking place;

Abolition (eliminating slavery), temperance (sobriety), and sufferage (voting rights for black men and white women)
Human rights and individual betterment

Prior to Jennie’s move, New Orleans hosted the largest population of free black people in the United States.

Mid-Nineteenth Century American Attitudes

History and Happenings in New Orleans in the early 1860s

Reconstruction-era 1865-1877

A time of extraordinary hope and political progress followed by a terrorist backlash.

If you liked this post, learn more about Jennie Carter in these posts;

Jennie Carter’s Thoughts & Words from Nevada City 1867 – 1874 (video)
Jennie Carter’s Nevada County Setting 1860s, 2nd Marriage & Obituary
Jennie Carter Book Review
Jennie Carter – Filming Behind-the-Scenes & Creative Partners
Nineteenth-Century Creole Snacks & Jennie Carter (Shared Tastes recipe blog)

Resources:

American Historical Association – *LARGE* educator resource list addressing Confederate Monument Debate

BlackPast.org

History Channel – 13th Amendment (1865)

Howard University – Reconstruction-era History 1865-1877

Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West edited by Eric Gardner, Copyright © 2007 published by University Press of Mississippi

Khan Academy – Start of the Civil War 1844

Louisiana State University – Free People of Color in Louisiana

NPR podcast – Emancipation Proclamation (1862) – what it didn’t do

Project Gutenberg | downloadable public domain books in multiple formats

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1863) was a Harvard Educated American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, writer and editor. His goal was to put an end to white supremacy.

The Souls of Black Folk