Task
Political Satire during Reconstuction
Your task is to examine the variety of laws and legal battles that help shaped America, after the end of The Civil War and with the advent of Reconstruction.
You are to craft a three page historical essay choose ONLY one of the following prompts as the Focus of your paper:
1. Discuss the differences between looking at only legal evidence to note changes – for example, seeing the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, the Enforcement Acts, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 – versus incorporating social evidence for changes, such as black resistance and civil rights efforts, the development of the KKK, and the violence of redemption. How would the stories differ if only legal evidence or only social evidence were considered? What does this tell us about historians’ jobs? Did Reconstruction lead to change?
2. What were the ultimate results or consequences of Reconstruction? Was it a failure or success? Look at the issue from the point of view of abolitionists, blacks, the South, and the North. What more do you think should have been done?
You are to craft a three page historical essay choose ONLY one of the following prompts as the Focus of your paper:
1. Discuss the differences between looking at only legal evidence to note changes – for example, seeing the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, the Enforcement Acts, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 – versus incorporating social evidence for changes, such as black resistance and civil rights efforts, the development of the KKK, and the violence of redemption. How would the stories differ if only legal evidence or only social evidence were considered? What does this tell us about historians’ jobs? Did Reconstruction lead to change?
2. What were the ultimate results or consequences of Reconstruction? Was it a failure or success? Look at the issue from the point of view of abolitionists, blacks, the South, and the North. What more do you think should have been done?