America’s History: Printed Page 537
| MAKING CONNECTIONS | Recognize the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters by answering these questions. |
ACROSS TIME AND PLACE During the Reconstruction years, Republican policymakers made sweeping policy decisions — especially having to do with land rights, voting rights, and education — that shaped the future of African Americans in the South and American Indians in the West. In an essay, compare U.S. policies toward the two groups. What assumptions and goals underlay each effort to incorporate racial minorities into the United States? To what extent did each effort succeed or fail, and why? How did the actions of powerful whites in each region shape the results?
VISUAL EVIDENCE Review the images in this chapter. Find two that show how Americans of the era thought the landscapes of the West ought to look when settlement was complete. Identify at least three others that show what the natural and built environments of the West really looked like. What do you conclude from this comparison about the ambitions and limits of westward expansion?