America’s History: Printed Page 476
America’s History: Value Edition: Printed Page 420
| REVIEW QUESTIONS | Answer these questions to demonstrate your understanding of the chapter’s main ideas. |
Based on the evidence presented in this chapter, did Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and Grant’s magnanimity to the defeated forces save the nation from a drawn-out guerrilla war, as some historians have argued? Or, as other scholars have suggested, did the events at Appomattox undermine black emancipation by giving a high priority to the reconciliation of northern and southern whites?
In 1860, the institution of slavery was firmly entrenched in the United States; by 1865, it was dead. How did this happen? How and why did Union policy toward slavery and enslaved people change over the course of the war?
THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING The thematic timeline for Part 5 lists six events or developments in the 1860s relating directly to the South’s secession and the Civil War. Does that list capture the war’s overwhelming importance to the history of nineteenth-century America? If not, is this deficiency inherent to timelines, or does it reflect a faulty construction of this specific timeline? How would you address this problem?