America’s History: Printed Page 604
| MAKING CONNECTIONS | Recognize the larger developments and continuities within and across chapters by answering these questions. |
ACROSS TIME AND PLACE This chapter explains cultural transformation as largely the result of industrialization. That’s true, but it’s not the whole story: the Civil War also helped bring about change. Organizers of the WCTU, for example, were distressed by alcoholism among the industrial working class but also by the plight of veterans, some of whom anaesthetized their war wounds through heavy drinking. Review the material in Chapters 14 and 15, on the Civil War and its aftermath, and then write an essay in which you explain how changes in American society during the Civil War and Reconstruction laid the groundwork for new controversies in the areas of race relations, reform, science, and religious faith.
VISUAL EVIDENCE This chapter contains several depictions of domestic spaces, and also of women in public. After studying these images, how would you describe the ideal roles that Americans of this era believed women should fulfill? Did the ideal differ, based on social and economic class? Compare these images to the photographs of women in this chapter. What differences do you see between the “ideal” depictions and the ways in which real women appeared in front of the camera?