Reconstruction

Reconstruction

You are a Senator in 1870. You represent a State with mixed urban/industrial and rural/agricultural activities. A bill has been introduced providing for the confiscation of plantation land owned by confederates and the redistribution of that land to the former slaves who once worked it. How you would vote? Would you oppose such a measure? Would you support it?

Your assignment is to write a speech explaining why you are voting the way you are. You will then post the speech to your web journal, so that everyone can read it.

Put yourself in the place of this imaginary Senator. Not only must you vote, you must explain your vote in a speech on the Senate floor, and in your speech try to persuade others to join you. To be effective, your speech must combine moral arguments with solid factual evidence.

We have placed a large number of documents from the time period online. You should use this material as the basis for your speech. Read these documents, and use them to make your arguments. The guide to using historical materials will help explain how to use the documents.

A good speech will acknowledge, and quote from, positions it disagrees with. Speeches should be about five minutes, which means no more than three double spaced pages. It must have a thesis.

For this exercise it will be useful to engage in some online discussion. The history department has developed some software tools for online discussion. Go to the "Scrapbook" page. You will need to create a new account. Choose "create a new account" and fill out the form. For your username, enter your last name only, in lower case. (note: if your last name is Jenkins, Kim, or Ha you will have to use your lastname and first initial of your first name, as in "kimh," "kimj" or "kimy".) Then click "create new account," and then on the next page click "Go to the Web Scrapbook home page." When you get back to this page, enter your username, which must be your last name only, in lower case, and your password. You should see a screen like this:

Click on "momalle3/cloakroom" and you can then enter your thoughts on the subject in this space. Other students in the class can do the same. This is anonymous, so you can post anything you like. You can meet other "Senators" in the "cloakroom" and discuss the subject. When you have finished writing your speech, you must post it in your web journal.

For background, begin with this brief outline of Reconstruction.

A thesis is a claim you are trying to make, a proposition about the past. For example, it might begin "I will vote against this bill, because Americans in this day and age believe private property is sacred." Your thesis in this case would be "Americans believed private property was sacred," and your paper would then quote Americans expressing this belief. You would prove your thesis by demonstrating that people believe what you said they believed. Alternatively, you might begin by saying "I support this bill because my fellow citizens recognize that true ownership belongs to those who work the land." In this case, your thesis is "American in those days believed that true ownership belonged to those who worked the land." You would then include quotations demonstrating this position.