By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Describe the efforts made by Congress in 1865 and 1866 to bring to life its vision of Reconstruction
Explain how the Fourteenth Amendment transformed the Constitution

Restoring the Union
Congress and the Remaking of the South, 1865–1866
Radical Reconstruction, 1867–1872
The Collapse of Reconstruction

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Explain the purpose of the second phase of Reconstruction and some of the key legislation put forward by Congress
Describe the impeachment of President Johnson
Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the Fifteenth Amendment

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Describe Lincoln’s plan to restore the Union at the end of the Civil War
Discuss the tenets of Radical Republicanism
Analyze the success or failure of the Thirteenth Amendment

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Explain the reasons for the collapse of Reconstruction
Describe the efforts of white southern “redeemers” to roll back the gains of Reconstruction

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Explain how American writers, both fiction and nonfiction, helped Americans to better understand the changes they faced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Identify some of the influential women and African American writers of the era

Urbanization and Its Challenges
The African American “Great Migration” and New European Immigration
Relief from the Chaos of Urban Life
Change Reflected in Thought and Writing

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Identify how each class of Americans—working class, middle class, and upper class—responded to the challenges associated with urban life
Explain the process of machine politics and how it brought relief to working-class Americans

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Identify the factors that prompted African American and European immigration to American cities in the late nineteenth century
Explain the discrimination and anti-immigration legislation that immigrants faced in the late nineteenth century

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Explain the growth of American cities in the late nineteenth century
Identify the key challenges that Americans faced due to urbanization, as well as some of the possible solutions to those challenges

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Explain the factors that shaped the new morality and the changing role of women in the United States during the 1920s
Describe the “new Negro” and the influence of the Harlem Renaissance
Analyze the effects of prohibition on American society and culture
Describe the character and main authors of the Lost Generation

Prosperity and the Production of Popular Entertainment
Transformation and Backlash
A New Generation
Republican Ascendancy: Politics in the 1920s

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Discuss the role of movies in the evolution of American culture
Explain the rise of sports as a dominant social force
Analyze the ways in which the automobile, especially the Model T, transformed American life

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Discuss Warren G. Harding’s strengths and weaknesses as president
Explain how Calvin Coolidge was able to defeat the Democratic Party
Explain what Calvin Coolidge meant by “the business of America is business”

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Define nativism and analyze the ways in which it affected the politics and society of the 1920s
Describe the conflict between urban Americans and rural fundamentalists
Explain the issues in question in the Scopes trial

The Compromise of 1850
The Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Republican Party
The Dred Scott Decision and Sectional Strife
John Brown and the Election of 1860