You must write an essay in which you argue
HOW the period of reconstruction and westward expansion was either more detrimental than beneficial.
In your essay, you must discuss two different documents from Voices of Freedom, as well as include information from the other course materials, for a total of four specific examples. Be sure to argue how the period was detrimental or beneficial by explaining who was hurt and how they were hurt, and how the detriments or benefits were bad or good for the nation as a whole and not just those who were directly affected.
Essays should be about 3-4 pages, typed and doubled-spaced. Parenthetical citations for the documents should include the author and name of the document and page number of cited material (for Kindle users use the location number). Citations for the lectures should include the title of the lecture, citations for the textbook should include the title of the textbook and page number of the cited material. All citations can be placed in parentheses within the text of the essay.
https://openstax.org/books/us-history/pages/16-introduction
Chapter Outline
16.1 Restoring the Union
16.2 Congress and the Remaking of the South, 1865–1866
16.3 Radical Reconstruction, 1867–1872
16.4 The Collapse of Reconstruction
Few times in U.S. history have been as turbulent and transformative as the Civil War and the twelve years that followed. Between 1865 and 1877, one president was murdered and another impeached. The Constitution underwent major revision with the addition of three amendments. The effort to impose Union control and create equality in the defeated South ignited a fierce backlash as various terrorist and vigilante organizations, most notably the Ku Klux Klan, battled to maintain a pre–Civil War society in which White people held complete power. These groups unleashed a wave of violence, including lynching and arson, aimed at freed Black people and their White supporters. Historians refer to this era as Reconstruction, when an effort to remake the South faltered and ultimately failed.
The above political cartoon (Figure 16.1) expresses the anguish many Americans felt in the decade after the Civil War. The South, which had experienced catastrophic losses during the conflict, was reduced to political dependence and economic destitution. This humiliating condition led many southern White people to vigorously contest Union efforts to transform the South’s racial, economic, and social landscape. Supporters of equality grew increasingly dismayed at Reconstruction’s failure to undo the old system, which further compounded the staggering regional and racial inequalities in the United States.
