Chapter Evaluation Assignment #1:
Chapters 16, 17, 18, and 19
The following questions correspond to the chapter readings in The American Nation: A History of the United States, Volume 2: Since 1865 textbook.
Chapter 16 Questions. Choose four questions to answer.
16.1 Why did President Abraham Lincoln offer such lenient terms for the reconstruction of the South?
16.2 Explain what the Fourteenth Amendment was—how it was passed and what its consequences were in terms of how it affected the relationship between the branches of government, how it affected the power of states, and how it affected the lives of black people in the South.
16.3 Explain the complicated Northern white attitudes toward the process of Reconstruction. What were the hopes for many Northern whites concerning the process of Reconstruction in the South?
16.4 In what ways was sharecropping an advance over slavery for black freedmen, and in what ways was sharecropping similar to slavery?
16.5 What were some of the reasons why Reconstruction ended when it did?
Chapter 17 Questions. Answer all four questions.
17.1 How did American settlers and the transcontinental railroad affect American Indian tribes west of the Mississippi in the later nineteenth century?
17.2 What was ‘Custer’s Last Stand’? Why did it happen and what were its consequences?
17.3 Compare and contrast the experiences of ranchers and farmers in the trans- Mississippi West.
17.4 What were some of the ways railroads shape the growth and development of the American West after the Civil War?
Chapter 18 Questions. Choose four questions to answer.
18.1 What made iron, oil, electricity, and the railroad industry so important for economic growth?
18.2 Compare the effect of competition on railroads with that of competition on steel.
18.3 Explain laissez-faire economics and describe the grounds on which William Graham Sumner defended the idea of laissez-faire economics.
18.4 How did Americans try to impose regulations on big business in the late nineteenth century?
18.5 Compare and contrast the Knights of Labor with the American Federation Labor. Which organization had made its peace with the new economy of industrial wage work?
Chapter 19 Questions. Choose four questions to answer.
19.1 How did American society and culture undergo a process of “incorporation” in the late nineteenth century?
19.2 What differences existed between skilled and unskilled workers outside their capabilities on the job?
19.3 How did native-born, largely Anglo-Saxon Americans react to the growing number of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century?
19.4 What new technologies and innovations aided the modernization of American cities in the late or at the turn of the century?
19.5 What motivated advocates of the Social Gospel, and what did they focus on doing?
