Chapter #15 Summary

“Reconstructing the National Identity, 1865-1877"

Class Course Note: These outlines are also available on the student resource pages of the Thomson learning program. I encourage you to use Thomson’s on-line resources too, although I do recognize that time is short in this summer course. My goal here and with subsequent outlines is to provide you with brief summaries of each chapter really to get you to begin thinking about how we can link periods and themes together in a historical fashion.

This chapter covers the first dozen years after the Civil War, the period known commonly as Reconstruction, when the nation recovered from the wounds of the Civil War and began implementing the northern version of the national identity. This period witnessed profound conflicts between the executive and legislative branches over the direction of policy toward the defeated Confederacy, with President Andrew Johnson taking a lenient approach and Republicans in Congress pushing a much stricter brand of policy. Ultimately, Congress prevailed, and the Reconstruction policies imposed on the south severely limited the power of white southerners and empowered African Americans for the very first time. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments gave blacks the right to vote and disallowed race-based interference in voting and went a long way toward bringing African Americans--or at least male ones--into the political structure of the nation. In addition to formulating and implementing policies for reintegrating the former Confederate states into the union, the federal government also worked to promote the nation's economic growth, most notably by supporting the constructing of the western railroads, including the first continental line, completed in 1869. The railroads tied the nation together, contributed to the creation of a national marketplace, and established federal dominance over western Native American groups such as the Sioux. As the railroads opened up the west and encouraged westward migration, they also stimulated foreign immigration to the United States and contributed to the development of large urban areas such as New York and Chicago. To be sure, not everyone in the country experienced good economic times. Freed slaves found life difficult at first, as did urban workers whose meager wages were often insufficient to provide even the barest of life's necessities. Other groups--women, Native Americans, and immigrants--were also left out of the nation's political life, and the Reconstruction era witnessed some of their early efforts to unite in search of better treatment. Not much progress toward the achievement of their goals would be achieved by the time Reconstruction ended in 1877, but the seeds of future reforms had been laid.

Questions to consider:

1) The American Civil War did not simply begin in response to a “point of principle” but rather concerned alternative views about economic and social systems and the issue of free and unfree labour. In the reconstruction period once this matter had been settled the debate shifted over to the larger meaning of citizenship and citizenship rights. Beginning in the reconstruction period explain how this meaning of “citizenship” has changed over time and how it has meant different things to different groups within American society?