Violence and Statebuilding After Civil War: Evidence from Freedmen’s Education

• In Event: What Comes Next?: Analyzing Post-Conflict Societies

Abstract

How do conflict dynamics and post-conflict peacebuilding initiatives affect the livelihoods of marginalized, minority groups after civil war? We investigate this question in the context of the Reconstruction South, where educational programs formed a particularly critical component of federal peacebuilding activities. Using newly digitized teacher’s reports from the Freedmen’s Bureau archives, we introduce a new county-month dataset of Freedmen’s Bureau schools, emancipated slaves’ educational achievements, and extrajudicial violence from 1865 to 1870. Previous limitations on the accessibility of Reconstruction archives, mean little data is available on Black educational initiatives in the postbellum period. With our novel data set, we extend the temporal scope of existing data on African American education in the South back 45 years. Moreover, we marshal data disaggregated by gender, yielding a novel portrait of the roles of women and girls in Reconstruction state-building programs.

In post-conflict settings, education systems often play a critical role in re-establishing political institutions, stabilizing fractured economies, and appeasing political dissidents. Existing work suggests that education specifically facilitates economic opportunity, social mobility, and political engagement for marginalized minorities. However, in the aftermath of civil conflict, successful reconstruction efforts are human capital intensive, and when such efforts target social transformation, achieving durable social change requires empowering beneficiary communities. We study the interrelationships of minority attainment, occupation peacebuilding activities, and anti-Black violence. Apart from coding school presence and the extent of African American educational achievements, we also aim to use teachers' letters attached to monthly Freedmen's Bureau educational reports in order to identify other phenomena, including violent events, protests, and disease outbreaks. These were rife in the Reconstruction South, critical in shaping Reconstruction's progress, and have proven difficult to quantify across time-and-space.

Leveraging a natural experiment, the plausibly exogenous deployment of Union troops to Texas counties during the Comanche Wars, we identify the effect of occupation troop presence, and especially the effect of Black troops, on freedperson’s educational achievements. This strategy presents an opportunity to explore how the identity of peacebuilding forces influences their efficacy. Black troops, with a vested interest in protecting and institutionalizing educational structures and Reconstruction state-building initiatives, have a greater effect on educational enrollment than White occupation forces. Cross-sectional evidence speaks to the broader importance of a robust military presence on women’s engagement with peacebuilding institutions, and to the positive legacies of education after civil war on minority groups’ political and socioeconomic achievements.

Authors

• Christopher William Blair, University of Pennsylvania

• Breanna C. Gray, University of Pennsylvania