Seize West From Appomattox: The Reconstruction Of America After The Civil War Showcased By Heather Cox Richardson Distributed As Interactive EBook

read, filled with excellent research, You find here that modern American politics really has its roots in Reconstruction, Reconstruction And The American West

In "West from Appomatox", Professor Heather Cox Richardson focuses on the role of the American West in defining the American experience and the American character in the decades following the Civil War to the present.
Richardson is Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst,

The story of Reconstruction is usually viewed as involving the victorious North and the defeated South, In the opening chapters of her book, Richardson gives a good brief summary of the Reconstruction era, But she does not stop there, She goes on to show how the West became emblematic during Reconstruction, for both Northerners and Southerners, of the promise of America.
The idealized image of the American West came to symbolize "individualism, economic opportunity, and political freedom, " p.In many ways, Richardson's view of the importance of the West is similar to that of the great early historian of this period, Frederick Jackson Turner.
Richardson indeed briefly discusses ppTurner's famous thesis of the end of the American frontier and its significance,

The West became attractive to Northerners as a place for independence and opportunity, where the corruptions of large businesses and the agitation of the labor unions could be put aside.
For Southerners, the West became a place to escape from the poverty that followed the Civil War and from the difficulties of Reconstruction.
With the idealizing of the West, for Richardson, came a view that all Americans shared the same interests and the same ways of achieving success that they were "working their way up together.
" p.This view led to the formation of a broad middle class, opposed on one side to the large concentrations of economic power in corporations and financial institutions and on the other side to "special interest groups" such as labor unions, African Americans, the poor, and strident advocates of women's rights.
The emerging middle class viewed these groups as seeking special favors and entitlements while the middle class saw the role of the government as preserving impartiality and equality in its treatment of all people.
The groups on the outside of this consensus, in their turn, pointed to structural factors in the United States which promoted inequality and unfairness and which required government intervention to correct.
The middle class also tended to overlook the many affirmative government actions necessary to sustain its own view of America,

Richarson develops her narrative from the Reconstruction Era through the first appearance of "Liberal Republicanism" in, to the terms of the reforms of Grover Cleveland, and through President McKinley and the Spanish American War.
The political figure that most exemplifies, for Richardson, the spirit of this era is Theodore Roosevelt, who gets a great deal of attention in his early reforming years in New York City, in his venture to the West, as the leader of the Rough Riders on San Juan Hill and as the President.
Richardson also devotes a great deal of attention to Owen Wister's novel, "The Virginian" as emblematic of American values at the beginning of theth Century.


Richardson's narrative tells of both broad events and of individuals that she sees as representative of some aspect of the development of the United States during the postCivil War period.
These individuals include, among others, former Confederate General Wade Hampton, Julia Ward Howe, the African American cowboy Nat Love, Buffalo Bill, Samuel Gompers, Indian leaders such as Sitting Bull, Geronimo and the Commanche leader Quanah.
Their stories are told together with the broader historical narrative of Richardson's account, and sometimes interfere with its flow,

Richardson sees in the rise of the American middle class that followed the Civil War the sources of the divisions that continue to characterize American society between those who favor government intervention to assist disadvantaged groups and those who oppose it, even while benefiting from government activism themselves.
Richardson finds much to be said for both sides, and for the opportunity for advancement and independence created by the emerging middle class, even though her sympathies clearly lie on the side of an activist government role.
She writes, p.: "America is neither excellent nor oppressive rather it is both at the same time, In, Americans had to reconstruct their shattered nation, Their solution "reconstructed" America into what it is today, "

Richardson's book is a thoughtful study of American history with provocative observations on the American character,

Robin Friedman Though I did gain a lot of insight into postCivil War America from this book and I appreciated the nuanced approach to discussions of the many political topics covered throughout, I ultimately found the writing to be somewhat dry and repetitive which made it difficult to get through.
While it's probably more engaging than a straight up textbook I wouldn't really recommend it unless you are particularly interested in the development of modern political party lines between the Civil War and the's.
All that being said, I will remind that nonfiction is not my typical reading preference so if you enjoy reading about history this might be your jam! Particularly apropos with the "you didn't build that" controversy, a history of Reconstruction focused not on the south, but on the westhow a national mythology of independent, frontier, roughhewn individualist cowboys brought together the recovering nation.
Except that it was the postCivil War big government's investments in things like railroads, and distribution of land under the homestead Act, and bureaucracy bringing in new territorial government into states and emigration controls that made it all possible.
'Reconstruction' takes on a new meaning, at least from what high schools have taught about it that hour or two of discussion sandwiched between the Civil War and trustbusting.


Here it represents not only the failure of the country to merge black with white, but it shows the formation of an.
. . ideology still pursued today.

The South came to be seen as a place where 'free labor' could now thrive once the 'advantage' of slave labor was removed.
But the idea of free labor meant your ability to negotiate with an employer for your services,

That ability may have existed antebellum in the North, but with the rise of industrial power, an employee even there might never even be in the same building with his employer.
The power differential was greatly different,

Any recognition of that disproportion sounded like the 'mob mentality' of theParis Commune, Unions were utterly distrusted. Any favoritism was, including tariff protection for large businesses,

But while people opposed the large business combinations surrounding steel and oil and notably railroads, no common approach, no common solution gelled.
No countervailing power base from which to address the issue,

Government action The South saw it as continued invasion, forced racial distortion, The North felt it wrongly interfered with the nature of mantoman contract,

Somehow the West, with its space arrogated from tribal peoples, seemed like opportunity, But even there, the small land holder got squeezed, and those larger interests that managed well got enormous help from the government, despite its sense of selfmade individualism.


Women If they fit into the scheme of home life, they earned praise, As to their 'free labor' based on equal suffrage: forget about it again, government interference,

What came out of this was our notion of the American 'middle class', Its reality is there, for some, The reality of its myth lies at the pit of American anxiety,




Notes:
pg
Anxious to spread settlers west and link the markets of China and the Orient with East Coast factories, Congress inoffered free land to any entrepreneur willing to build a railroad line across the country, land that could be sold to finance the cost of construction.


pg
Bygirls made up the majority of high school graduates, Fewer thanof college age Americans went to college women made ofof that group,

pg
For Republicans, the election ofwas about the survival of the free labor system based on economic harmony for which the North had fought.
Insisting

that there was no class conflict in America and that all Americans were climbing upward together, they emphasized America's founding principle of republican equality.
Military protection for African Americans was imperative, they argues, not to guarantee a Republic constituency, but because it was "the duty of the Government to sustain constitutions securing equal civil and political rights to all.
. . and to prevent the people of the South from a state of anarchy, "

pg
As mainstream opinion turned against blacks who were caricatured as wanting government benefits with work, Americans opposed the growth of national government power to protect African Americans from the widespread discrimination they faced.
inthe passage of the Civil Rights Act brought down the wrath of opponents, who howled that African Americans who used the law to challenge their exclusion from public places were not protesting a real disability, but rather were the degraded tools of designing politicians.


pg
The very act of agitating for civil rights indicated a person was unworthy of them, making it impossible to challenge increasing segregation and discrimination.


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Because members of the middle class identified their values with the interests of the country at large, the government could and did advance their interests, creating the paradox of a middle class that benefited mightily from government protection while its members espoused selfhelp and government inaction, At the same time that members of the middle class celebrated individual enterprise, selfreliance, and small government, they prompted certain forms of government inaction.
The need to create taxable property during the war had made them willing to use the government to promote the individual enterprise that lay at the heart of theri vision of American life.
With fewer and fewer misgivings about government action, they passed a series of laws designed to foster economic growth, After the war, this government activism gradually expanded to government prohibitions on a range of business practices, price fixing, kickbacks, and so on, which threatened the economic security of a developing middle class.


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