page contents

In Unit 3, students will evaluate how as the United States grows, so too does conflict between the North and the South.  As students examine the American Civil War they will evaluate Southern secession and the resulting Northern victory that preserved the union.  Students will also analyze the aftermath of the war by examining Supreme Court decisions and the political, social, and economic effects on African Americans during the Reconstruction era.

 

For Discussion:

  1. Analyze the role of economic, political, social, and ethnic factors on the formation of regional identities in what would become the United States from the colonial period through the nineteenth century.
  2. Describe how the interpretations of slavery as an institution changed over time.
  3. Analyze the motives behind, and the results of, economic, military, and diplomatic initiatives aimed at expanding US power and territory in the Western Hemisphere in the years between independence and the Civil War.
  4. Assess the impact of Manifest Destiny, territorial expansion, the Civil War, and  industrialization on popular beliefs about progress and the national destiny of the United States in the nineteenth century.
  5. In what ways did the Kansas-Nebraska Act affect the presidential election in 1856? How did these changes carry over into the election of 1860?
  6. Analyze how the debates over political values (such as democracy, freedom, and citizenship) and the extension of American ideals abroad contributed to the ideological clashes and military conflicts of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century.
  7. How do you account for Abraham Lincoln's difficulty in his reelection campaign in 1864?
  8. What were the consequences of the Civil War?
  9. Consider the economic and material impact of the Confederacy's defeat.
  10. Was the Freedman's Bureau a success or failure?
  11. Why were competing visions of the political future of the post- Civil War South so linked to labor and land policies?