Civil War Reconstruction

civil war reconstruction
Why college courses split Civil War and Reconstruction into 2 parts?

Virtually every college and university in this country divide the U.S. history survey into two courses, always splitting at the Civil War/Reconstruction. Why do you think that this particular division makes sense? What is it about those two related events that compels historians to divide American history into a before and after at that specific pivot?

My school actually divided it into four, Colonial North America, Early National United States, Reconstruction – WWII, and Modern U.S. History.

Making divisions in history is always tough because it will include a bias of what the most important events in our history are. I think that splitting at Civil War/Reconstruction is a good idea because the war just changed so much, politically, economically, and socially. Up to that point tensions between the North and South had been steadily growing, and they finally came to a head during the Civil War. Things that weren’t really examined with much sincerity or detail before the war, such as racism and the economic differences between the North and South, were suddenly thrust into the spotlight to be discussed by all. There was no denying these things anymore. And of course the death of Lincoln just threw fuel into the fire.

When Reconstruction began, things could not go back to the way they were before the war. The country had changed in many ways and they had to look forward. The huge event that propelled all of this was the finishing of the transcontinental railroad. The economics of everything changed. The South realized that it could no longer rely on its previous methods of plantation farming to compete with the rest of the country – they would have to modernize their methods along with everyone else. This brings about a lot of innovations and new ways of doing business, which of course leads us into the Gilded Age.

I could go on from here, but my point was that things really did change at that point. We went from being almost an entirely agriculture-based nation to one that focused more on innovation and technological invention. Slavery was ended and the old way of doing things had to be changed. There have been other major changes before and after that event in U.S. History, but that one was pretty major (and also works well for dividing our history nicely in half for college courses).