History 108 CRN #77522 Assignment One

ASST ONE

History 108 CRN #77522 Assignment One

Will cover events up to 1917.

 

How do I do this assignment?

I am giving you five question groups. You only have to answer any two of the groups. For each of the groups I want you to do a brief essay. Your completed assignment will have two essays.

How long should each essay be ?

Answer at least two of the assigned question groups. Try to give me at least a page for each essay. Make them single spaced, 12 pt. Your total for the entire assignment should be minimum 2.5 -3.0 pages single-spaced. You will not be penalized if you write more.

Answering the questions

The type of questions I have given you are designed to encourage you to think analytically. I want to get your opinions on historical issues. Also, these questions are designed to limit the use of Artificial Intelligence and other forms of plagiarism. I want to see your work and your perspective and thinking, not facts rehashed by a machine.

Give me not only the important facts but your perspective. Use your own words and do not cut and paste from other sources, especially internet sources.

How do I submit my assignment?

What I want you to do is to type out your answers, preferably in Microsoft Word and then upload them to “ASST ONE” on the Assignments Board.

[When you do Assignments Two and Three and Assignment Four [The Final] later on in the term you will upload them to “ASST TWO” “ASST THREE” AND “FINAL’.]

It is very important that when you do your three essays that you submit them all together in a single document, not in three separate documents.

Please don’t e-mail it to me. All work I get from you needs to be checked for plagiarism. Uploading your work to the Assignment Board automatically uploads I to Turnitin which generates two reports: a similarity report to any material on the Web and an AI report which flags the percentage of work it believes has been generated by Artificial Intelligence.

Please review the guidelines I have posted on the Announcement Board and on the Syllabus about Plagiarism and Artificial Intelligence.

Please send me an e-mail if there is anything that is confusing you.

 

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Now let’s look at the Assignment Groups. There is one on Reconstruction, one on The Gilded Age, one on The Hungry Nineties , one on The 1900’s and one on The 1910’s.

Remember, you only have to answer two of the five groups. If you do more, I will grade your best groups.

Group One: Reconstruction: Tragic Era or Unfinished Revolution?

Tell me how Lincoln planned to restore the South to the Union. How does his death doom the hope for a middle course? I want you to tell me how much you think Lincoln might have succeeded if he had lived. How does Presidential Reconstruction under Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866 try to turn back the clock on civil rights in spite of the Thirteenth Amendment. How realistic do you think Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner are in trying to impose full racial and social equality upon the South? Could they really make Yankees out of Southerners? To what degree do you think the Ku Klux Klan is responsible for defeating Reconstruction? How have historians changed their views on not only Reconstruction but the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant?

Group Two: The Gilded Age: Emergence of Modern America: Hayes, Garfield, and Arthur:

Tell me why the historian traditionally paint a grim picture of America between 1875 and 1900. To what degree do you personally think that the Gilded Age was as grim as it’s been portrayed? To what degree were Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan villains …and to what degree were they heroes? I want you to try to explain to me how conservative thinking about government, wealth and poverty persist in spite of enormous economic and social changes. How does the Civil War continue to be fought at the ballot box between 1868 and 1884? What does the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes tell us about what might have happened if Lincoln lived? Had President Garfield lived, how much do you think the history of the 1880’s might have been different? How did Chester Arthur reflect the real mood of the decade and how did this very symbol of corruption launch the nation on the course of reform?

Group Three: Cleveland, Harrison and The Hungry Nineties:

I want you to tell me why Grover Cleveland’s election in 1884 is a watershed. To what degree do you think the South here reverses the victory of the Union on the battlefield? How many goals of the Confederacy are attained by the South’s “internal secession”? Tell me how North and South are reconciled at the expense of Black Americans? Why does the issue of the tariff begin to move to the front in the late 1880’s and what makes it so important? How much can we say that Grover Cleveland as president looks back to the early 19th century while Benjamin Harrison looks forward to the 20th? How do the Populist Party and the Democrats under William Jennings Bryan try and fail to challenge the conservative politics of the Gilded Age?

Group Four: Progressivism in the 1900’s:Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft:

How and why does the public mood begin to shift after McKinley’s election in 1896? What do you think of the argument of some that the Progressive Era was a myth? Where do you think they are right and where are they wrong? How and why will Progressive politicians win elections where Populists didn’t? How much do you think the idea of national greatness shapes the policies and actions of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency? Roosevelt begin to redefine the role of the Federal government and the Presidency? Tell me how Progressive reform gains momentum after 1904. How does William Howard Taft’s philosophy of government cause him to move from Progressive reformer to becoming the father of 20th century American conservatism?

Group Five: Progressivism in the 1910’s: Woodrow Wilson and the New Freedom.

Tell me how the radicalism of the “Missionary Generation” helps to shape the climate of the 1910’s. Why doesn’t socialism get off the ground and become a realistic option for Americans? Tell me how some of the obstacles to reform in the House, Senate and Supreme Court are removed between 1910 and 1914. How much does the failure of the Republican base to embrace Progressivism help bring about the realignment of the parties? How and why did the Democrats fail between 1894 and 1908? How is Woodrow Wilson able to embrace Progressivism, adapt it to Democratic Party principles and win the White House? Can we make the case that between 1913 and 1916 Woodrow Wilson was the real Progressive president? Show me how the 1912 and 1916 elections realign the parties. How and why do you think Wilson won in 1912 and 1916? Do you think it possible that Wilson’s 1912 and 1916 victories masked the reality that Republicans were still the majority party?