V. 1861-1877
(AP Historic Period 5)
Lincoln's election in 1860 prompts Southern secession, and forces President Lincoln to wage a war to preserve the Union. The American Civil War becomes the bloodiest conflict in American history, while the consequences of the war change the very nature and meaning of our Constitution and government. The biggest change would be an end to slavery, as Southerners had to find a way forward without aristocratic planter leadership and their "peculiar institution."
AP Tools for Success
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Themes (Use these to tie evidence together across time periods for easy "complex thinking." TIP-Choose one with which to focus for the year.):
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Historical Thinking Skills (Use these to practice the skills graders are looking for on AP Rubrics.):
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Document Analysis Acronym (Use this when analyzing documents to add the words--actually use the words in responses-- and skills graders are looking for on AP Rubrics.):
C-Context (This is often used as 'H' for Historical Situation.)
A-Audience
P-Point of View (POV)
P-Purpose
A-Audience
P-Point of View (POV)
P-Purpose
A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST
ITSELF . . .
War
The Fort Sumter Crises
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"On March 4, 1861 Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as the 16th President of the United States from the new Republican Party. Between his election on November 6, 1860 and February 9, 1861, seven states in the Deep South seceded and formed a new nation – The Confederate States of America. President Lincoln has scheduled a meeting of advisers for March 29, 1861 to discuss the looming crisis in Charleston Harbor at Fort Sumter, where Major Robert Anderson is surrounded by Confederate forces and desperately short of provisions. He reports that by mid-April he will be forced to surrender unless relieved." Click the botton below to assume the role of Lincoln in Richard Latner's incredible simulation.
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SIMULATION!
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You are President Abraham Lincoln, c. 1861. Can you lead a nation on the verge of civil war? Let's see how your decision-making stands up to the test of time.
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Mary Chesnut's Diary
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Daughter of a powerful father, and wife of a major Confederate leader, Mary Chesnut saw her world change as few have. She was raised in one of the wealthiest societies in human history, and was witness to the total destruction of everything around her. Her dairy is a rare glimpse into a forgotten world. Watch the video to learn more.
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SIMULATION!
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You are Confederate General Lee, c. 1863. Can you force the North to give up the war? Let's see how your decision-making stands up to the test of time.
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Hardtack and Hell-Fire Stew!
- Soldiers have always suffered poor diets. Learn just how resourceful they had to be in the Civil War.
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Civil War in Links:
The Civil War-National Archives
A Wide Variety of Resources
A Wide Variety of Resources
The Civil War-EyeWitness to History.com
Primary Sources
Primary Sources
Battles of the American Civil War
Battle Maps and Descriptions
Battle Maps and Descriptions
The Gettysburg Address-Smithsonian
Documenting the American South-University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Primary Sources
Primary Sources
Valley of the Shadow-University of Virginia
A Comparison of two communities, Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania.
A Comparison of two communities, Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania.
American Battlefield Trust
A great resource for maps and tour information.
A great resource for maps and tour information.
The Entire Civil War in Minutes!
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From the Lincoln Presidential Museum.
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Day by Day! From Emperor Tigerstar
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SOUTHERN POSTMORTEM
Famous Columbia University historian Eric Foner provides insight into the failure of the Southern Confederacy to leave the Union.
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Va. Document Analysis/Mini-DBQ Practice
From the Cengage Learning Teacher's Resource Guide
On the Civil War...
From the Cengage Learning Teacher's Resource Guide
On the Civil War...
PROMPT
Evaluate the extent to which the Civil War transformed the United States
politically, economically, and socially. Use the documents provided and your
knowledge of U.S. history to respond.
Evaluate the extent to which the Civil War transformed the United States
politically, economically, and socially. Use the documents provided and your
knowledge of U.S. history to respond.
DOCUMENTS
1. T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (1952).
"Fundamentally Grant was superior to Lee because in a modern total war he had a modern mind, and Lee did not. Lee looked to the past in war as the Confederacy did in spirit.... What was realism to Grant was barbarism to Lee. Lee thought of war in the old way as a conflict between armies and refused to view it for what it had become—a struggle between societies. To him, economic war was needless cruelty to civilians. Lee was the last of the great old-fashioned generals, Grant the first of the great moderns."
2. Allan Nevins, The War for the Union (1971).
"One cardinal deficiency of the Confederacy... lay in the lack of a chief national executive possessing some of the energy, foresight, and firm decision exhibited by those other leaders of a newborn republic at war, Washington, Cromwell, or Masaryk. It is impossible for a student of the great rebellion to avoid comparing the character, talents, and sagacity of Lincoln with the parallel gifts of Jefferson Davis, greatly to the disadvantage of the latter. This broad subject... must always be kept in mind as an essential element of the war."
3. Thomas C. Cochran, “Did the Civil War Retard Industrialization?” Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1961).
"Collectively these statistical estimates support a conclusion that the Civil War retarded American industrial growth.... Economically the effects of war and emancipation over the period 1840 to 1880 were negative.... If factory industry and mechanized transportation be taken as the chief indexes of early industrialism, its spread in the United States was continuous and rapid during the entire nineteenth century.... Few economists would see a major stimulation to economic growth in the events of the Civil War."
4. James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (1988).
"The old federal republic in which the national government had rarely touched the average citizen except through the post-office gave way to a more centralized polity that taxed the people directly and created an internal revenue bureau to collect these taxes, drafted men into the army, expanded the jurisdiction of the federal courts, created a national currency and a national banking system, and established the first national agency for social welfare—the Freedmen’s Bureau.... These changes in the federal balance paralleled a radical shift of political power from South to North.... The accession to power of the Republican party, with its ideology of competitive, egalitarian, free-labor capitalism, was a signal to the South that the northern majority had turned irrevocably toward this frightening, revolutionary future. Union victory in the war destroyed the Southern vision of America and ensured that the Northern vision would become the American vision."
1. T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (1952).
"Fundamentally Grant was superior to Lee because in a modern total war he had a modern mind, and Lee did not. Lee looked to the past in war as the Confederacy did in spirit.... What was realism to Grant was barbarism to Lee. Lee thought of war in the old way as a conflict between armies and refused to view it for what it had become—a struggle between societies. To him, economic war was needless cruelty to civilians. Lee was the last of the great old-fashioned generals, Grant the first of the great moderns."
2. Allan Nevins, The War for the Union (1971).
"One cardinal deficiency of the Confederacy... lay in the lack of a chief national executive possessing some of the energy, foresight, and firm decision exhibited by those other leaders of a newborn republic at war, Washington, Cromwell, or Masaryk. It is impossible for a student of the great rebellion to avoid comparing the character, talents, and sagacity of Lincoln with the parallel gifts of Jefferson Davis, greatly to the disadvantage of the latter. This broad subject... must always be kept in mind as an essential element of the war."
3. Thomas C. Cochran, “Did the Civil War Retard Industrialization?” Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1961).
"Collectively these statistical estimates support a conclusion that the Civil War retarded American industrial growth.... Economically the effects of war and emancipation over the period 1840 to 1880 were negative.... If factory industry and mechanized transportation be taken as the chief indexes of early industrialism, its spread in the United States was continuous and rapid during the entire nineteenth century.... Few economists would see a major stimulation to economic growth in the events of the Civil War."
4. James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (1988).
"The old federal republic in which the national government had rarely touched the average citizen except through the post-office gave way to a more centralized polity that taxed the people directly and created an internal revenue bureau to collect these taxes, drafted men into the army, expanded the jurisdiction of the federal courts, created a national currency and a national banking system, and established the first national agency for social welfare—the Freedmen’s Bureau.... These changes in the federal balance paralleled a radical shift of political power from South to North.... The accession to power of the Republican party, with its ideology of competitive, egalitarian, free-labor capitalism, was a signal to the South that the northern majority had turned irrevocably toward this frightening, revolutionary future. Union victory in the war destroyed the Southern vision of America and ensured that the Northern vision would become the American vision."
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Lincoln
Heated Congressional Debate Over Reconstruction and the 13th Amendment, Even Without Southerners Present!
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In this scene Thaddeus Stevens (played by Tommy Lee Jones) defends the idea of a Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution banning slavery, tearing into Ohio Representative, George H. Pendleton, and his opposition to such an Amendment. From 2012's great movie, Lincoln. "As the American Civil War continues to rage, America's president struggles with continuing carnage on the battlefield as he fights with many inside his own cabinet on the decision to emancipate the slaves".
Director: Steven Spielberg Writers: Tony Kushner (screenplay), Doris Kearns Goodwin (based in part on the book "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln") -From IMDB |
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Reconstruction
Reconstruction: The Second Civil War
The American Experience Series, 2004--a classic! "Spanning the years from 1863 to 1877, this dramatic mini-series recounts the tumultuous post-Civil War years. America was grappling with rebuilding itself, with bringing the South back into the Union, and with how best to offer citizenship to former slaves. Stories of key political players in Washington are interwoven with those of ordinary people caught up in the turbulent social and political struggles of Reconstruction." Video below is in two parts.
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Reconstruction Era Amendments
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Their Legacy
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Their Legacy
Under Construction. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.
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Lecture:
Reconstruction |
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The Legacy of Robert Fitzgerald, Teacher of Freed People
Vb. Document Analysis/SAQ/MCQ Practice
From the Cengage Learning Teacher's Resource Guide
The Nature of Reconstruction
From the Cengage Learning Teacher's Resource Guide
The Nature of Reconstruction
EXCERPTS
William A. Dunning, Reconstruction: Political and Economic (1907).
"Few episodes of recorded history more urgently invited thorough analysis than the struggle through which the southern whites, subjugated by adversaries of their own race, thwarted the scheme which threatened permanent subjection to another race.... The most rasping feature of the new situation to the old white element of the South was the large predominance of northerners and negroes in positions of political power.... The most cunning and malignant enemy of the United States could not have timed differently this period of national ill-repute; for it came with the centennial of American independence...."
Kenneth Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction (1965).
"Finally, we come to the idealistic aim of the radicals to make southern society more democratic, especially to make the emancipation of Negroes something more than an empty gesture. In the short run this was their greatest failure.... Still, no one could quite forget that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were now part of the federal Constitution.... Thus, Negroes were no longer denied equality by the plain language of law, as they had been before radical reconstruction, but only by coercion, by subterfuge, by deceit, and by spurious legalisms.... The blunders of that era, tragic though they were, dwindle into insignificance. For if it was worth four years of civil war to save the Union, it was worth a few years of radical reconstruction to give the American Negro the ultimate promise of equal civil and political rights."
SAQ PRACTICE QUESTIONS
(a) Briefly describe ONE major difference between Dunning’s and Stampp’s historical interpretations of Reconstruction.
(b) Briefly explain ONE specific historical development (1865–1877) that supports Dunning’s interpretation.
(c) Briefly explain ONE specific historical development (1865–1877) that supports Stampp’s interpretation.
EXTENSION QUESTIONS
William A. Dunning, Reconstruction: Political and Economic (1907).
"Few episodes of recorded history more urgently invited thorough analysis than the struggle through which the southern whites, subjugated by adversaries of their own race, thwarted the scheme which threatened permanent subjection to another race.... The most rasping feature of the new situation to the old white element of the South was the large predominance of northerners and negroes in positions of political power.... The most cunning and malignant enemy of the United States could not have timed differently this period of national ill-repute; for it came with the centennial of American independence...."
Kenneth Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction (1965).
"Finally, we come to the idealistic aim of the radicals to make southern society more democratic, especially to make the emancipation of Negroes something more than an empty gesture. In the short run this was their greatest failure.... Still, no one could quite forget that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were now part of the federal Constitution.... Thus, Negroes were no longer denied equality by the plain language of law, as they had been before radical reconstruction, but only by coercion, by subterfuge, by deceit, and by spurious legalisms.... The blunders of that era, tragic though they were, dwindle into insignificance. For if it was worth four years of civil war to save the Union, it was worth a few years of radical reconstruction to give the American Negro the ultimate promise of equal civil and political rights."
SAQ PRACTICE QUESTIONS
(a) Briefly describe ONE major difference between Dunning’s and Stampp’s historical interpretations of Reconstruction.
(b) Briefly explain ONE specific historical development (1865–1877) that supports Dunning’s interpretation.
(c) Briefly explain ONE specific historical development (1865–1877) that supports Stampp’s interpretation.
EXTENSION QUESTIONS
- What does each of these historians see as the fundamental goals of Reconstruction? How well does each think it achieved those goals?
- According to each of these viewpoints, what were the roles of Northern whites, Southern whites, and blacks in Reconstruction?
- How would each of these historians interpret the overturning of Reconstruction and its continuing meaning for American society?
MCQ PRACTICE
1. Which of the following best explains the historical context that influenced Dunning’s interpretation?
A. The expansion of civil rights movements in the 1960s
B. The dominance of segregation and “Lost Cause” ideology in the early 20th
century
C. The immediate aftermath of the Civil War and abolition of slavery
D. The rise of industrial capitalism during the Gilded Age
2. Which of the following developments most directly influenced Stampp’s more favorable interpretation of Reconstruction?
A. The rise of nativism in the late 19th century
B. The success of Populist movements in the South
C. The modern civil rights movement and reevaluation of racial equality
D. The expansion of U.S. imperialism after 1898
3. Which of the following pieces of evidence would best support Stampp’s argument about Reconstruction’s long-term significance?
A. The end of federal military occupation in 1877
B. The establishment of Black Codes in southern states
C. The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment
D. The rise of sharecropping as a labor system
(These questions reinforce historical thinking skill 4: Contextualization)
(They also practice historical interpretation--historiography--a key AP skill
1. Which of the following best explains the historical context that influenced Dunning’s interpretation?
A. The expansion of civil rights movements in the 1960s
B. The dominance of segregation and “Lost Cause” ideology in the early 20th
century
C. The immediate aftermath of the Civil War and abolition of slavery
D. The rise of industrial capitalism during the Gilded Age
2. Which of the following developments most directly influenced Stampp’s more favorable interpretation of Reconstruction?
A. The rise of nativism in the late 19th century
B. The success of Populist movements in the South
C. The modern civil rights movement and reevaluation of racial equality
D. The expansion of U.S. imperialism after 1898
3. Which of the following pieces of evidence would best support Stampp’s argument about Reconstruction’s long-term significance?
A. The end of federal military occupation in 1877
B. The establishment of Black Codes in southern states
C. The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment
D. The rise of sharecropping as a labor system
(These questions reinforce historical thinking skill 4: Contextualization)
(They also practice historical interpretation--historiography--a key AP skill
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Analyzing Political Cartoons from the Era
The Cartoons below would be, or have been, used by the College Board to address similar themes involving the Reconstruction Period. Can you determine which were negative and which were positive comments on Reconstruction? Can you successfully answer the Sample SAQ--Remember to use the techniques outlined in on the "Doing the DBQ, SAQ, and LEQ" page!
Vc. Analyzing Documents/SAQ Practice
From the Cengage Learning Teacher's Resource Guide
Is This a Republican Form of Government?
(By Thomas Nast, Harper's Weekly, 1876)
Vc. Analyzing Documents/SAQ Practice
From the Cengage Learning Teacher's Resource Guide
Is This a Republican Form of Government?
(By Thomas Nast, Harper's Weekly, 1876)
PROMPT CARTOON
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QUESTIONS a) Briefly explain the point of view expressed by Nast about ONE of the following: -Constitutional Changes of the Reconstruction Period -The Rights of African Americans -Southern Resistance to Reconstruction b) Briefly explain ONE development from 1865 to 1877 that may have led to the point of view expressed by Nast. c)Briefly explain ONE way in which the developments from 1865 to 1877 challenged the point of view expressed by Nast. |
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ARE THESE POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE TAKES ON RECONSTRUCTION? WHY, WHY NOT? Under Construction
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