American Reconstruction: Key Events & Ideas

Solution Preview

Dear Student,
Hi and thank you for your patience. In this particular task, you are being asked to reflect on an event in American history and its impact then and in the long term. I suggest using this outline:

1. Historical Background - 150 words
2. Key Ideas, practical & Ideological - 300 words
3. Relevance to National Identity - 200 words
4. Opinion - 100 words

This is a concise outline - if you need something longer, lengthen the discussion but be careful when you discuss certain ideas. Sometimes it best to stick to the key concepts, expand it a little by having 2 or 3 sentences to explain it further if that's all you need unless asked otherwise. Remember this for all your essays and history papers as a trick in doing historiographic work - you need the dates, the social description of the event, situation or concept and its relevance in the bigger picture. This outline will yield 2 pages or more. You can use the listed resources to further explore the topic. Just let me know via the feedback section if you need further clarification.

Sincerely,
AE 105878/Xenia Jones

American History Lessons: The Reconstruction

The reconstruction is seen as one of the formative periods in American identity in that as a civilization-building event, it led an America ravaged by Civil War and ideological divisions towards a managed (albeit not conflict-free) process of rebuilding the country, economically and sociologically into one working nation politically and culturally. With the dates set from 1863 to 1877 (14 years) to be the period of 2 historiographic concerns under the label American Reconstruction, historians deem that these 2 great concerns can be labelled under the following headings:

1. The Transformation of the US South (state and society) directed by the US Government from 1863-1877;
2. The history of the entire nation as one entity from 1865-1877;

1863 is for some historians the transformative year that led to the Reconstruction at the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by then Pres. Abraham Lincoln, the Presidential Constitutional authoritative exercise that allowed Lincoln to make the eradication of slavery and emancipation of over 3 million slaves a 'war goal' .1865 meanwhile marked the end of the Civil War with the Confederacy succumbing the northern Union. The aftermath showed great economic and material ruin in key areas of the South so that farms, businesses, key infrastructures were in disrepair. To attempt at restoring the South to the union and reconstruct the political and economic stability of the nation as a whole the following measures & events took place:

1. The 10% Plan where (Sparknotes, 2014), "each secessionist state had to redraft its constitution and could re-enter the Union only after 10 percent of its eligible voters pledged an oath of allegiance to the United States." This was part of Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction plan to find ways to resolve the division politically. This was put in place by succeeding Pres. Andrew Johnson as a moderate measure (vs. the Wade-Davis Bill seen to be too radical ...