Maddie Weaver

4A Us History
January 11, 2014

Where Historians Disagree

Reconstruction
Person/People
William A.
Dunning

W. E. B. Du Bois

John Hope Franklin

Kenneth Stampp

Eric Foner
Leon Litwack

Heather Richardson

Date
1907

Philosophy
Corrupt outrage imposed on the South by vindictive Northern
Radicals. Northern carpetbaggers flooded the South to profit
from their misery of defeat. Unfit and unable Africans were
thrust into office. Reconstruction only survived because of the
determination to keep the Republican Party in power.
1910/1935 An effort to create a more democratic society. The
governments misdeeds had been exaggerated and their
accomplishments overlooked. Major spending was due to
efforts to bring education and other public services to the
South on a scale never before attempted.
1961
Republicans had made a genuine effort to solve the race
1965
problem in the South by protecting the freedmen. The
Reconstruction governments had been bold experiments and
had made important advances in the South, such as public
education. The Radicals had shown real concern for the rights
of the slaves. The South was no more corrupt than the North
and Africans had played a small, though significant, part in
Reconstruction. The true corruption was what wasnt done for
the slaves during this time, not what was done to Southern
whites.
1983/1988 Africans played a large role in Reconstruction and though
1979
they only held political power for a short time, they managed
to make a big step while they had the power. They built a
certain independence for themselves in the South.
2001/2007 The entire nation changed during Reconstruction, not just the
South. The North may have even changed more. It was a time
of western expansion and industrialization, as well as
Reconstruction.

The Origins of Segregation

Person/People
W. J. Cash

Dates
1941

C. Vann Woodward

1956

Philosophy
It was a result of the failure of Reconstruction and happened
naturally and gradually.
After Emancipation, blacks and whites lived together, though

Joel Williamson

1965

Leon Litwack
Ira Berlin
Howard Rabinowitz

1965
1974
1978

John Cell

1982

not equally. They werent separated at first. Segregation

emerged from a combination of factors: Jim Crow laws,
Populists movements scaring whites into thinking blacks
might gain considerable political power, and the idea of white
supremacy.
Blacks and whites were already separated by the end of
Reconstruction. Blacks formed their own, independent
societies and whites avoided them and discouraged the blacks
from entering their own societies. Laws only codified what
had already happened.
Segregation originated in the North. It emerged naturally out
of already well-established habits from before the Civil War.
A result of the growing challenge of devising a form of racial
relations that would suit the growing Southern cities.
Segregation was the Souths way of giving the blacks their
own communities. Without it, they would have been excluded
rather than integrated.
Segregation was the new form of controlling blacks. Since
slavery was now banned, the Southern whites used the Jim
Crow laws to preserve white supremacy.

The Frontier and the West

Person/People
Francis Parkman

Dates
1849

Frederick Jackson Turner

Ray Allen Billington
Walter Prescott Webb

1893
1949
1931/1952

Henry Nash Smith

Earl Pomeroy
Howard Lamar

1950
1955
1956

new western historians

Richard White
Patricia Nelson Limerick
William Cronon

1970s on

Philosophy
The West was a place of adventure and opportunity. It
was a place for new beginnings, where brave men
fought to create new civilizations.
American western expansion was central to Americas
history. It transformed the barbaric land into a modern,
civilized one. It constantly reminded Americans of the
ideas of democracy and individualism, and shaped the
whole nation. It was a result of the brave men who
were willing to overcome the various obstacles of
settling it.
The image of the West was mostly myth. The settlers
of the West were more imitators of the civilizations in
the East rather than creative innovators. The West has
such a vast amount of territory that it is impossible to
emphasize a distinctive western environment and the
determinant of western experience.
The settlement of the Great American West wasnt
really settlement. There were many peoples already
there and it was more conquest than settlement.
Bravery and success were accompanied by oppression,

Donald Worster
Peggy Pascoe

greed, and failure. The settlers of the west were never

independent; they relied on the government for
assistance. It was a process of cultural convergence.