The University of Sydney

HSTY 4014

Directions: Read the Feature Essay: “Changing Views of Reconstruction” and answer the associated questions. The essay explains the changing historiography of Reconstruction. One of the central arguments of the essay is that each generation’s imagination of the era of Reconstruction is a “fairly reliable index of how they viewed black-white relations in their own time.” After reading the Feature Essay, read the textbook excerpts. As you read the excerpts from various textbooks, think about when it was published. Remember that each textbook account is a product of its own time and should reflect that time period’s race relations. As you read each account, determine which era it was published in and cite textual evidence to support your answer. FEATURE ESSAY QUESTIONS: 1. (Lost Cause Interpretation) How did the Burgess school of historian’s view Reconstruction at the turn of the century? They said it was the most “soul sickening spectacle that americans had to behold” 2. (Birth of a Nation Interpretation) How did the ‘Birth of a Nation’ film shape the study of Reconstruction from 1915 through the 1940s? It made the reconstruction era seem like a way to make black superior to whites and it made the kkk seem like the saving grace the south needed 3. (Revisionist Interpretation) How did Kenneth M. Stampp, John Hope Franklin and other historians ‘revise’ the nation’s understanding of Reconstruction from the 1950s to the 1980s? Ken wrote a book about the Northern view of the reconstruction era in which he suggests that this time period Showed a shift in