Delaware Social Studies Standards

• History Standard 1: Chronology

• History Standard 2: Analysis

• History Standard 3: Interpretation

• History Standard 4: Content

History Standard 3

• Grades 9-12: “Students will compare competing historical narratives by contrasting different historians’ choice of questions, use and choice of sources, perspectives, beliefs, and points of view in order to demonstrate how these factors contribute to different interpretations.

Changing Interpretations of ReconstructionFour schools of thought

Traditional(first half of 20th century)

• South accepted defeat; ready to be reintegrated into Union.

• Wise and generous policies of Lincoln and Johnson were thwarted by Radical Republicans

• An era ruined by corrupt scalawags, greedy carpetbaggers, and ignorant freedmen.

• Reconstruction ended when white southerners banded together to restore HOME RULE.

Traditional

Reconstruction was…

A dramatic change for the worse.

Dissenting(first half of 20th century)

• Black scholars, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, argued that white historians had ignored the most important people in the story of Reconstruction: Freed Slaves.

• Reconstruction was a noble attempt to establish real democracy in the South.

• Largely ignored by white historians.

Revisionist(1960s)

Reconstruction achieved successes:

• Public school systems

• Equal citizenship for black men

• Efforts to revive Southern economy

Reconstruction governments not any more corrupt than those in the North.

Revisionist

Reconstruction was…

A dramatic change for the better.

Post-Revisionist(1970s-1980s)

• Challenged the optimism of the Civil Rights Era.

• Reconstruction was a continuation of the antebellum (pre-Civil War) South.

• Wealthy whites continued to exploit poor blacks through legal (Jim Crow Laws) and illegal (Ku Klux Klan) means.

Post-Revisionist

Reconstruction was…

Not enough change.

Today…

Historians continue to re-evaluate Reconstruction.

SOURCESImages:• America’s Libraryhttp://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/aa/dubois

• Reconstruction: The Second Civil Warwww.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reconstruction

• The History of Jim Crowhttp://www.jimcrowhistory.org/scripts/jimcrow/gallery.cgi

Historiography:

Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction