1). What made modern America modern? 

What made modern America modern?

To answer this question, decide what was the most important  

development/person/event, etc., for EACH of those five categories for the period  1865-1920 and explain why it was the most important in helping to make “modern  America modern.”  

Heat, Pleasure, Communication, Motion,Heat

Identifying the most important development, etc., is a beginning step, but the most  important part of the essay comes in how well you defend your choices. Picking out  five developments, people, etc. is not hard, establishing the evidence and creating a  convincing argument about why those five things mattered most is the key to the  question.  

1. Heat

∙ Momentum  

2. Motion

∙ Railroads, cars, etc  

o Carnegie (steel)

o Vanderbilt (railroads)

o Rockefeller (oil)  

3. Communication’

∙ Invention of the telephone  

Who won the long peace that followed the surrender at Appomattox in 1865?

∙ Industrial Revolution (choose inventions)  

4. Pleasure

∙ Consumerism  

∙ Buy products to increase pleasure

5. Fear  

∙ Influenced by fear  

∙ Immigration instilled fear, losing jobs, culture, etc  

∙ 1924 Immigration Act

∙ Jim Crow based on fear  

o African Americans are going to take over government and their jobs

2). Two of the central questions for this course are “What is America?” and “What is  an American?” In class, we have examined multiple ways that the idea of “America”  and the idea of an “American” evolved in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A  crucial concept that became a standard assumption for many Americans was that the U.S. was a “melting pot,” and the process of “melting” immigrants into a national  mold made the U.S. the remarkably strong nation that it became in the 20th Century.  Using material covered in lectures, discussions, readings, and other assignments,  answer the following question:

what is Radical Reconstruction?

We also discuss several other topics like maher henary

Is the concept of America as a “melting pot” a valid one  to use for immigration and the reaction to it in the late  19th and early 20th centuries? 

▪ Define the concept of “melting pot” and its origins.  ▪ Melting Pot came from a stage play written by Isreael Zangwill in 1908 ▪ Story of David Quizano (fictional Russian Jewish immigrant) who is intent on  moving to US after family dies in violent anti Semitic riot in Russia

▪ Melting pot  metaphor for races, cultures or individuals

1

▪ Explain how the immigration of the late 19th-early 20th centuries  challenged existing notions of an “American” and how those  immigrants helped to change the U.S. economy, American  culture, and the look, feel, and livability of U.S. cities.

▪ Each immigrant had varied cultural backgrounds and was essential in  molding America’s public identity. 

▪ Known as shelter

▪ Americans wanted to strip them of their  culture and Americanize the  immigrants

▪ Immigrants gave the US an economic edge in the world economy, bring in  new ideas and entrepeanual spirt, increase trade and invest profitably in the  global economy, fill jobs most Americans don’t want 

▪ Explain the emergent hostility to the “new” immigration and the  rise of laws restricting immigration. If you want to learn more check out biology 114 exam 1
We also discuss several other topics like apph 1040 gatech

▪ States started to become hostile to immigrants because they believed they  were stealing their jobs and taking away from their American culture ▪ Seen as cultural and economic threats If you want to learn more check out ametabolous

▪ Prior to 1800s  little to no federal government control of flow of  immigrants

▪ 1819  immigrants were required to report their arrival (weak) ▪ Page Act of 1875  targeted Asian laborers, convicts and prostitutes by  denying them entry to US

▪ Chinese Exclusion Act 1882  banned Chinese immigrants  ▪ The rise of the melting pot Julia Higgins

▪ 1917  required literacy test 

▪ 1907 Japanese voluntarily limited immigrants Gentlemen Act ▪ 1924 stricter immigrant act excluded Japanese

▪

Provide an answer to whether “melting pot” is a valid concept to  apply to that time period.

I believe it was a valid concept due to the metaphorical meaning, however I do not believe the positive connotation should be associated with the term. I believe that  most Americans were not thrilled with the idea and did try to make the immigrants

feel unwanted or that they must give up their own culture. Forced immigrants to  ostracize the next wave of immigrants. I believe that it symbolized the end of  cultural acceptance. Americans wanted to believe they would be happily to let  immigrants in.

3). Two of the central questions for this course are “What is America?” and “What is  an American?” In class, we have examined multiple ways that the idea of “America”  and an “American” evolved in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the key  places and inspirations for the development of “American” identity is the West. Using material covered in lectures, discussions, readings, and other assignments, answer  the following question:

• What is more important, what we want to believe about  the West or what the West was?

To answer this questions students need to: We also discuss several other topics like soci 282 study guide

• Explain the popular vision of the West (at least partially as  represented in popular culture—how the West was used in films,  advertisements, political personas, and other forms).

• Popular vision of West: Cowboys, badass, Marlboro man

• Good and bad were distinguishable  

• Hollywood created image that the cowboys were good and the Indians were bad • Helps people find their identity  

• Marlboro advertisements used men to show mostly as cowboys in West, military  tattoo on back of hand,  

• Indians were savage  

• Frontier over meant you couldn’t go get land in West

• Compare that vision to the more realistic history of the West and  westward expansion. Don't forget about the age old question of carol erbes

• The "White man" is usually either seen as the brutal force defeating Indians or as the  democratic adventurer exploring our land. It is not that easy

• Many different tribes not only known as Indians  

• American settlers came in conflict with Indians, Indian Removal Act which resulted in  the infamous Trail of Tears, relocated from west of Mississippi to what is now  Oklahoma  

• Consequences of western development: economic expansion, environmental (bison,  habitat destruction and pollution)

• Wounded knee occurred  

• Showed symbol of the inhumanity of the U.S. government policy toward  Native Americans

• Government demanded size of weapons, shots fired accidently and  marked the last showdown of Native Americans and US Army.  

• Nat Love Deadwood Dick BLACK COWBOY

Argue which one of the two is more important in understanding  the West and understanding American identity. Or perhaps,  explain how the two notions are inseparable.

• I believe that the actual representation of the West is more important.  

It is sad to say that some people do not know that the Hollywood made

image of the West is nothing but a myth. It is inevitable to say that the  

media has distorted many things in the past  

4) Who won the long peace that followed the  

surrender at Appomattox in 1865, particularly if  

one considers the period from 1865-1877? 

• Students are free to define the “who” of their answer. Some  possibilities include: Republican leaders, big business, African  Americans (including former slaves), southern white  

supremacists, or even immigrants.

• Answers to this question should:

• Establish a basic chronology of Reconstruction that explains why  Radical Reconstruction developed, what key legislation and  Constitutional amendments shaped Reconstruction and the  meaning of freedom, and what key moments and ideas that  brought an end to Reconstruction.

• Huge win because it came from them having nothing  

to having some rights  

• Radical reconstruction developed due to the poor  

revisions of President Johnson during the Presidential  

Reconstruction

What was passed during this time?

• Civil Rights Act of 1866 ­­ Confers citizenship on African Americans and 

guarantees equal rights. 

• Reconstruction Acts  Congress divides the former Confederacy into  

five military districts and requires elections in which African American  

men can vote. 

• Fourteenth Amendment Ratified  guarantees due process and equal  

protection under the law to African Americans. 

• Fifteenth Amendment Ratified  extends the vote to all male citizens  

regardless of racer or previous condition of servitude.

• Forty­Second Congress

• Five black members in the House of Representatives: Benjamin S.  

Turner of Alabama; Josiah T. Walls of Florida; and Robert Brown  

Elliot, Joseph H. Rainey and Robert Carlos DeLarge of South  

Carolina. 

• First African American Governor

• P. B. S. Pinchback, acting governor of Louisiana from December 9,  

1872 to January 13, 1873. 

• Democrats Control the Forty­third Congress

• For the first time since before the Civil War, Democrats control both  

houses of Congress. Robert Smalls, black hero of the Civil War,  

elected to Congress as representative of South Carolina. Blanche K.  

Bruce elected to U. S. Senate. 

• Civil Rights Act of 1875 enacted by Congress

• This act guaranteed equal rights to African Americans in public  

accommodations and jury service. Ruled unconstitutional in 1883. 

• Reconstruction Ends

• Sophisticated answers will explore the ways that the memory of  Reconstruction has changed over time in scholarship and in  popular culture, the ways that this answer has changed over  time.

• Reconstruction was seen as a failure

1 Challenges: white resistance, carpetbaggers  

motivated by greed and corruption, Ku Klux Klan which

eventually led to Jim Crow Laws and blacks were once  

again treated poorly  

• Added 13,14 and 15th amendment, freedom bureau  

and bill of rights, new industry, new churchs and  

schools  

• All answers should offer an argument about the long-term  legacies of Reconstruction and its aftermath.

∙ Birth of Nation

o Black people take over the legislature during  

reconstruction  

4) Who won the long peace that followed the  

surrender at Appomattox in 1865, particularly if  

one considers the period after the 1880s, the rise  

of Jim Crow? 

• Homer Plessy (looked white) decided to fight against segregation, sat  

in railroad car, arrested  

• Violated constitutional rights and brought to Supreme court  

• Allowed separate but equal  

• Jim Crow  discriminates African Americans  

o Seperated water fountains, schools, etc.

Big Business 

• Profited , Captains of Industry or robber barons  

• Viewed a heroes and villains  

• Brought industrial growth and economic strength to the North

• Control over the market, allowed them to set their own price (laissez  

faire)  

• Vanderbilt (railroads)

• Used their lack of government interference to their advantage as they  

developed their own industries

• Rockefeller (oil)

• Carnegie (steel)  made money and said its their obligation to give  

money back but direct how to spend it  

 Revolutionized steel

 Carnegie library in every state  

• J.P. Morgan (banking house)

•

• Increase demand for labor (satisfied by immigration)

Reconstruction  13th, 14th, 15th amendment  

Abolish slavery, gave citizenship, right to vote

Jim Crow took a turn  

5) Answers to this question should:

a. Explain the ways that Reconstruction helped build power for  African-Americans after emancipation (including legislation and

Constitutional amendments) and establish new meanings of  freedom, citizenship, and “American” identity. And then detail  how that power declined in the post 1880 period known as Jim  Crow and why that decline occurred.

b. Explore the ways that the South fit into the U.S. as a whole,  particularly its economic expansion, the white southerner’s need  to combat the reality that they lost the Civil War and to control  the African American population, and the evolving role of race as  a scientific and political category.

c. All answers should offer an argument about ways in which  interpretations of the Constitution evolved over time and altered  the power of its amendments.

∙ Plessy vs Ferguson argued that it was against constitution for separate  

railroad cars

∙ Took it to supreme court, ruled separate but equal setting back civil rights ∙ Lead to Jim Crow

∙ Brown v Board of Education established that separate facilities were  

inherently unequal under the law and overturned Plessy  

Students may certainly argue that there was no “winner.”

TIMELINE:  

Expansion to West 1803

Emancipation Proclamation 1863

Gettysburg Address

Civil War Ends 1865

13th Amendment 1865  

Radical Reconstruction

Presidential Reconstruction

Military Reconstruction

14th Amendment 1868

15th Amendment 1870

Plessy v Ferguson 1896

1). What made modern America modern? 

To answer this question, decide what was the most important  

development/person/event, etc., for EACH of those five categories for the period  1865-1920 and explain why it was the most important in helping to make “modern  America modern.”  

Heat, Pleasure, Communication, Motion,Heat

Identifying the most important development, etc., is a beginning step, but the most  important part of the essay comes in how well you defend your choices. Picking out  five developments, people, etc. is not hard, establishing the evidence and creating a  convincing argument about why those five things mattered most is the key to the  question.  

1. Heat

∙ Momentum  

2. Motion

∙ Railroads, cars, etc  

o Carnegie (steel)

o Vanderbilt (railroads)

o Rockefeller (oil)  

3. Communication’

∙ Invention of the telephone  

∙ Industrial Revolution (choose inventions)  

4. Pleasure

∙ Consumerism  

∙ Buy products to increase pleasure

5. Fear  

∙ Influenced by fear  

∙ Immigration instilled fear, losing jobs, culture, etc  

∙ 1924 Immigration Act

∙ Jim Crow based on fear  

o African Americans are going to take over government and their jobs

2). Two of the central questions for this course are “What is America?” and “What is  an American?” In class, we have examined multiple ways that the idea of “America”  and the idea of an “American” evolved in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A  crucial concept that became a standard assumption for many Americans was that the U.S. was a “melting pot,” and the process of “melting” immigrants into a national  mold made the U.S. the remarkably strong nation that it became in the 20th Century.  Using material covered in lectures, discussions, readings, and other assignments,  answer the following question:

Is the concept of America as a “melting pot” a valid one  to use for immigration and the reaction to it in the late  19th and early 20th centuries? 

▪ Define the concept of “melting pot” and its origins.  ▪ Melting Pot came from a stage play written by Isreael Zangwill in 1908 ▪ Story of David Quizano (fictional Russian Jewish immigrant) who is intent on  moving to US after family dies in violent anti Semitic riot in Russia

▪ Melting pot  metaphor for races, cultures or individuals

1

▪ Explain how the immigration of the late 19th-early 20th centuries  challenged existing notions of an “American” and how those  immigrants helped to change the U.S. economy, American  culture, and the look, feel, and livability of U.S. cities.

▪ Each immigrant had varied cultural backgrounds and was essential in  molding America’s public identity. 

▪ Known as shelter

▪ Americans wanted to strip them of their  culture and Americanize the  immigrants

▪ Immigrants gave the US an economic edge in the world economy, bring in  new ideas and entrepeanual spirt, increase trade and invest profitably in the  global economy, fill jobs most Americans don’t want 

▪ Explain the emergent hostility to the “new” immigration and the  rise of laws restricting immigration.

▪ States started to become hostile to immigrants because they believed they  were stealing their jobs and taking away from their American culture ▪ Seen as cultural and economic threats

▪ Prior to 1800s  little to no federal government control of flow of  immigrants

▪ 1819  immigrants were required to report their arrival (weak) ▪ Page Act of 1875  targeted Asian laborers, convicts and prostitutes by  denying them entry to US

▪ Chinese Exclusion Act 1882  banned Chinese immigrants  ▪ The rise of the melting pot Julia Higgins

▪ 1917  required literacy test 

▪ 1907 Japanese voluntarily limited immigrants Gentlemen Act ▪ 1924 stricter immigrant act excluded Japanese

▪

Provide an answer to whether “melting pot” is a valid concept to  apply to that time period.

I believe it was a valid concept due to the metaphorical meaning, however I do not believe the positive connotation should be associated with the term. I believe that  most Americans were not thrilled with the idea and did try to make the immigrants

feel unwanted or that they must give up their own culture. Forced immigrants to  ostracize the next wave of immigrants. I believe that it symbolized the end of  cultural acceptance. Americans wanted to believe they would be happily to let  immigrants in.

3). Two of the central questions for this course are “What is America?” and “What is  an American?” In class, we have examined multiple ways that the idea of “America”  and an “American” evolved in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the key  places and inspirations for the development of “American” identity is the West. Using material covered in lectures, discussions, readings, and other assignments, answer  the following question:

• What is more important, what we want to believe about  the West or what the West was?

To answer this questions students need to:

• Explain the popular vision of the West (at least partially as  represented in popular culture—how the West was used in films,  advertisements, political personas, and other forms).

• Popular vision of West: Cowboys, badass, Marlboro man

• Good and bad were distinguishable  

• Hollywood created image that the cowboys were good and the Indians were bad • Helps people find their identity  

• Marlboro advertisements used men to show mostly as cowboys in West, military  tattoo on back of hand,  

• Indians were savage  

• Frontier over meant you couldn’t go get land in West

• Compare that vision to the more realistic history of the West and  westward expansion.

• The "White man" is usually either seen as the brutal force defeating Indians or as the  democratic adventurer exploring our land. It is not that easy

• Many different tribes not only known as Indians  

• American settlers came in conflict with Indians, Indian Removal Act which resulted in  the infamous Trail of Tears, relocated from west of Mississippi to what is now  Oklahoma  

• Consequences of western development: economic expansion, environmental (bison,  habitat destruction and pollution)

• Wounded knee occurred  

• Showed symbol of the inhumanity of the U.S. government policy toward  Native Americans

• Government demanded size of weapons, shots fired accidently and  marked the last showdown of Native Americans and US Army.  

• Nat Love Deadwood Dick BLACK COWBOY

Argue which one of the two is more important in understanding  the West and understanding American identity. Or perhaps,  explain how the two notions are inseparable.

• I believe that the actual representation of the West is more important.  

It is sad to say that some people do not know that the Hollywood made

image of the West is nothing but a myth. It is inevitable to say that the  

media has distorted many things in the past  

4) Who won the long peace that followed the  

surrender at Appomattox in 1865, particularly if  

one considers the period from 1865-1877? 

• Students are free to define the “who” of their answer. Some  possibilities include: Republican leaders, big business, African  Americans (including former slaves), southern white  

supremacists, or even immigrants.

• Answers to this question should:

• Establish a basic chronology of Reconstruction that explains why  Radical Reconstruction developed, what key legislation and  Constitutional amendments shaped Reconstruction and the  meaning of freedom, and what key moments and ideas that  brought an end to Reconstruction.

• Huge win because it came from them having nothing  

to having some rights  

• Radical reconstruction developed due to the poor  

revisions of President Johnson during the Presidential  

Reconstruction

What was passed during this time?

• Civil Rights Act of 1866 ­­ Confers citizenship on African Americans and 

guarantees equal rights. 

• Reconstruction Acts  Congress divides the former Confederacy into  

five military districts and requires elections in which African American  

men can vote. 

• Fourteenth Amendment Ratified  guarantees due process and equal  

protection under the law to African Americans. 

• Fifteenth Amendment Ratified  extends the vote to all male citizens  

regardless of racer or previous condition of servitude.

• Forty­Second Congress

• Five black members in the House of Representatives: Benjamin S.  

Turner of Alabama; Josiah T. Walls of Florida; and Robert Brown  

Elliot, Joseph H. Rainey and Robert Carlos DeLarge of South  

Carolina. 

• First African American Governor

• P. B. S. Pinchback, acting governor of Louisiana from December 9,  

1872 to January 13, 1873. 

• Democrats Control the Forty­third Congress

• For the first time since before the Civil War, Democrats control both  

houses of Congress. Robert Smalls, black hero of the Civil War,  

elected to Congress as representative of South Carolina. Blanche K.  

Bruce elected to U. S. Senate. 

• Civil Rights Act of 1875 enacted by Congress

• This act guaranteed equal rights to African Americans in public  

accommodations and jury service. Ruled unconstitutional in 1883. 

• Reconstruction Ends

• Sophisticated answers will explore the ways that the memory of  Reconstruction has changed over time in scholarship and in  popular culture, the ways that this answer has changed over  time.

• Reconstruction was seen as a failure

1 Challenges: white resistance, carpetbaggers  

motivated by greed and corruption, Ku Klux Klan which

eventually led to Jim Crow Laws and blacks were once  

again treated poorly  

• Added 13,14 and 15th amendment, freedom bureau  

and bill of rights, new industry, new churchs and  

schools  

• All answers should offer an argument about the long-term  legacies of Reconstruction and its aftermath.

∙ Birth of Nation

o Black people take over the legislature during  

reconstruction  

4) Who won the long peace that followed the  

surrender at Appomattox in 1865, particularly if  

one considers the period after the 1880s, the rise  

of Jim Crow? 

• Homer Plessy (looked white) decided to fight against segregation, sat  

in railroad car, arrested  

• Violated constitutional rights and brought to Supreme court  

• Allowed separate but equal  

• Jim Crow  discriminates African Americans  

o Seperated water fountains, schools, etc.

Big Business 

• Profited , Captains of Industry or robber barons  

• Viewed a heroes and villains  

• Brought industrial growth and economic strength to the North

• Control over the market, allowed them to set their own price (laissez  

faire)  

• Vanderbilt (railroads)

• Used their lack of government interference to their advantage as they  

developed their own industries

• Rockefeller (oil)

• Carnegie (steel)  made money and said its their obligation to give  

money back but direct how to spend it  

 Revolutionized steel

 Carnegie library in every state  

• J.P. Morgan (banking house)

•

• Increase demand for labor (satisfied by immigration)

Reconstruction  13th, 14th, 15th amendment  

Abolish slavery, gave citizenship, right to vote

Jim Crow took a turn  

5) Answers to this question should:

a. Explain the ways that Reconstruction helped build power for  African-Americans after emancipation (including legislation and

Constitutional amendments) and establish new meanings of  freedom, citizenship, and “American” identity. And then detail  how that power declined in the post 1880 period known as Jim  Crow and why that decline occurred.

b. Explore the ways that the South fit into the U.S. as a whole,  particularly its economic expansion, the white southerner’s need  to combat the reality that they lost the Civil War and to control  the African American population, and the evolving role of race as  a scientific and political category.

c. All answers should offer an argument about ways in which  interpretations of the Constitution evolved over time and altered  the power of its amendments.

∙ Plessy vs Ferguson argued that it was against constitution for separate  

railroad cars

∙ Took it to supreme court, ruled separate but equal setting back civil rights ∙ Lead to Jim Crow

∙ Brown v Board of Education established that separate facilities were  

inherently unequal under the law and overturned Plessy  

Students may certainly argue that there was no “winner.”

TIMELINE:  

Expansion to West 1803

Emancipation Proclamation 1863

Gettysburg Address

Civil War Ends 1865

13th Amendment 1865  

Radical Reconstruction

Presidential Reconstruction

Military Reconstruction

14th Amendment 1868

15th Amendment 1870

Plessy v Ferguson 1896