U.S. ERA OF CIVIL WAR & RECON

It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of the American Civil War as an event in the making of the modern United States and, indeed, of the western world.  Indeed the American Civil War and Reconstruction introduced a whole series of dilemmas that are still with us.  What is the legacy of slavery in U.S. history and contemporary life?  What is the proper balance of power between the states and the central government? Who is entitled to citizenship in the United States?   What do freedom and equality mean in concrete terms?

This course surveys the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction in all of its aspects.  It focuses on the causes of the war in the divergent development of northern and southern states; the prosecution of the war and all that it involved, including the process of slave emancipation; and the contentious process of reconstructing the re-united states in the aftermath of Union victory.  The course includes the military history of the conflict, but ranges far beyond it to take the measure of the social and political changes the war unleashed.  It focuses on the Confederacy as well as the Union, on women as well as men, and on enslaved black people as well as free white people.  It takes the measure of large scale historical change while trying to grasp the experience of those human beings who lived through it.