The Civil War can be approached in many ways—as a final violent phase in a conflict between two regions with distinct interests; as the breakdown of a democratic political system; as the climax of several decades of social reform; and as the central chapter in America’s racial history. A study of the Civil War provides teachers with opportunities to engage students to explore the great constitutional issues, debates, moral dilemma, political crises, and compromises of the time. Students should be able to understand the conviction felt by Northerners and Southerners and how their passionate feelings of righteousness led to the tragedy of the Civil War.

An exploration of the causes of the Civil War reveals the era’s complexity and the inability of elected officials to forge a lasting compromise. Students should examine how the Civil War was precipitated by Southern secession, which had grown out of sectional differences dating back to the founding of the nation. At the same time students need to understand that sectional conflicts extended beyond the slavery issue to cultural differences, conflicting economic interests, and opposing perspectives on the Constitution. Examining the great speeches of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, and the debates between Lincoln and Douglas will help students understand the competing interests of the time. It is important, however, for students to note that the North and the South were not monolithic—within each region there was widespread diversity, although both Northerners and Southerners continued to support many of the same the republican principles of government.

The Union victory and the era known as Reconstruction (1865-1877) began the process of rebuilding political, cultural, and economic institutions. One problem at the end of the war was the status of the former Confederates states and their residents. Another problem was the status of the newly liberated slaves in the post-war nation. Much of the complexity of Reconstruction resulted from the connections between these two problems.

The retreat from Reconstruction is an important topic that students should explore. Students should confront and discuss De Tocqueville’s grim prediction, made thirty years prior, that observing that although slavery may be abolished “the prejudice to which it has birth is immovable.” Students should examine how the hopes of African-Americans for full equality, constitutionally guaranteed by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, were subsequently undermined by the courts, by political interests, and by white southerners’ resistance, opening a century-long struggle to realize equal rights for African Americans.

As the South struggled to deal with the challenge of Reconstruction, the Great Plains was rapidly settled. By 1870, the expansion of the railroads accelerated migration to the West. Homesteaders, cowboys, and prospectors led the way. Over the next three decades American agricultural production doubled. The building of the railroads, the destruction of the native bison, and federal land policies signaled the end of tribal life for the Indians of the Great Plains.

United States policies of Indian removal culminated in the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 which ended the policy of respecting tribal bonds, allocated acreage to individuals, and promised eventual citizenship to the Indians, setting the course for federal Indian policy until the New Deal. Students should examine Indian attempts to maintain their culture, dramatically and tragically illustrated by the Ghost Dance movement of 1889-1890, which ended with the massacre at Wounded Knee.

The frontier legend tied “free land” to the ideals of freedom, opportunity, and individual self-determination. Students can explore this vision of the West in dime store novels of the era, in the writings of Theodore Roosevelt, and in the scholarship of Frederick Jackson Turner.

The nineteenth century closed on a less than auspicious note: the frontier of the American West was pronounced closed, the Plains Indians were herded together on reservations, and the African American quest for full equality before the law was frustrated by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson.

The rise of business, a growing labor movement, technical innovations, and new immigration patterns all transformed the United States. These changes brought modern conveniences and an improved standard of living for most Americans, but also ushered in many problems associated with increased industrialization, urbanization, and political corruption. Students should examine the role of the Progressives as they responded to these new problems, especially the political, social, and economic reforms at the local, state, and national level.