Reconstruction Dbq

The Civil War was one of the most brutal battles that the United States has ever part-taken in. This was because of the fact that we are ultimately fighting ourselves. This battle was to set order and form to the newly drafted nation called The United States of America. The Reconstruction period affected ideas of American Identity, national purpose and citizenship for many reasons shown throughout the era of the mid-late 1800’s.
The Reconstruction period embodied the Northern idea of American identity in which according to Vice-President Calvin Coolidge, “when our rapid multiplication will expand itself . . . over the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, and by similar laws; nor can we contemplate with satisfaction either blot or mixture on that surface. “In other words, this statement given describes that when settler came to the America’s and developed a common way of living, they started migrating with people of all different colors to start living in a unified and equal nation. To most historians as well as APUSH, “The United States national purpose led to conflicts over new definitions of citizenship, particularly regarding the rights of African

Americans, women, and other minorities.”( https://www.nsd.org/cms/lib08/WA01918953/Centricity/Domain/2826/Period%205%20Exam%20Review%20Sheet.pdf ) In spite of the fact that citizenship, rise to an assurance of the laws, and voting rights were allowed to African Americans through the14th and 15th Amendments, these rights were logically stripped away through isolation, brutality, Supreme Court choices, and local political strategies.

During the Reconstruction time period, women's'

rights movement both encouraged and partitioned over the fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution but no action was ever done until 50 years later. The Civil War Amendments also set up a legal rule that took the halt for a long time which inevitably turned into the reason for court choices maintaining social liberties and civil rights. These Amendments made America’s national purpose easily stated in our Constitution. In the Constitution, it states America’s main goal which is, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” ( https://theparagraph.com/2009/01/the-purpose-of-the-united-states/ ) This is how the Reconstruction period affects ideas of American identity, national purpose and citizenship throughout the United States.
Changes the idea of American identity of ingenuity and creativity as the reason for our success, national purpose, and citizenship presented through the Reconstruction Era.