| Understanding Civil War Reconstruction |
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Process
Your class will be divided into the Northern and Southern societies. Once you know which side you will be on you must choose an identity from one of the following roles according to which side you belong to.
-- Southern Belle or Northern Lady: Compare and contrast these women‚s sets of ideas, hopes, values, beliefs, personalities, and behaviors by identifying their likenesses and differences. How are their homes compared to what they were before the war? What are their lives like now compared to what they were? Find photos of these women before and after the war. Interview them and find as much personal information as you can. Read diaries that you find. -- Confederate Soldier or Union Soldier: Dramatize the emotions of a soldier after the war. How does he feel about having fought against family members? How does he feel about the changes going on in his country now? What are some of the changes going on? What are his innermost thoughts and feeling about the reconstruction changes? What is the daily life of this soldier like now? Read some diaries from the civil war involving the soldier‚s life. Find photographs of their uniform and their dress after the war. Did they help camouflage the soldiers during the war? How has the reconstruction changed his life? -- Freed Slaves in North or South: Was life good for African Americans now? What were their jobs like now compared to before the war? Could they buy land? Where did they go to school before and after reconstruction? Compare and contrast the problems the African Americans were facing. Were they able to hold office? Find photographs and diaries to use and read. What are some of the difficulties they are facing? Why didn‚t the colored people know how to be free and why did white people not know how to have a free colored person around them? What changes in our government came about to help the African American be a free person? -- Carpetbaggers, Ku Klux Klan Scalawags: Demonstrate an understanding in your journal of how the North and South differed and how politics and cultural differences played an important role. Take pictures of the dress they wore in this role and explain how their role was so different than before the war. -- Caste System of the North or South: Large emphasis was placed on the new economy. There was a growing desire to form a „middle class‰ in the North. Increased communication made advertisers take advantage of this and they started selling their products, making Americans more materialistic which effected the economy of our country. As a journalist find out how the North was becoming more modernized. Analyze the causes and effects of these changes and how it effected reconstruction in the North. In the South the family unit was fundamental. It is not as modernized as the North and was viewed as being backwards. Describe and examine the Southern culture based on tradition and their belief systems of the lower and higher caste system. Take photographs, read diaries, interview people of all class systems in the North or South.
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