Social Studies Curriculum

United States History

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Antebellum Through Reconstruction (1850-1877)

Three weeks (through Week 9)

Enduring Understandings

The students will understand:

1. Slavery was an institution impacting each region of the United States differently, and though its contradictions with the nation’s founding principles were apparent to many, great efforts were made to find compromise.
2. Internal conflict is a necessary and essential component of a democratic nation.

Essential Questions

1. How is slavery justified in a democratic nation? 
2. How do the American people react to the institution of slavery? 
3. How does slavery impact the development of the American ideal of civil rights?
4. What are the tensions, factors, causes and outcomes of internal conflict? 
5. What are the constitutional, legal and social impacts of internal conflict?
6. What is civil war?
7. How does a nation heal from its conflicts? 
8. What are the short term and long term outcomes of internal conflict?
9. Why are diverse and minority opinions important in a democracy?

Objectives

• Discuss key features of the Compromise of 1850.
• Discuss the Kansas-Nebraska Act and its effects. 
• Evaluate the effects of the Supreme Court decisions including the Dred Scott Case.
• Explore the rise of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, and 1856 Election.
• Analyze the election of 1860.
• Evaluate the multiple factors that went into various state’s decisions on whether to secede or remain in the Union. 
• Analyze the Civil War by locating major battle sites and discussing their significance; assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the Union and Confederacy; discussing the major stages and theaters of war; evaluate the roles of Lincoln, Davis, Grant, and Lee; Emancipation Proclamation.
• Explore the impact of the assassination of Lincoln and its effects on the nation.
• Compare and contrast the visions for Reconstruction held by Lincoln, Johnson, and the Radical Republican Congress. 
• Analyze the struggle between Johnson and Congress over the direction of Reconstruction culminating in the impeachment and Senate trial of Johnson.
• Analyze the effects of Radical Reconstruction and the Compromise of 1877.
• Examine Congressional civil rights legislation and the related Civil War amendments.
• Examine the social and economic condition of the South during and after Reconstruction: from the participation of African-Americans to the return of the Old South. 
• Define essential terms including:  popular sovereignty, Bleeding Kansas, Freeport Doctrine, Lecompton Constitution, effective repeal of Missouri Compromise, and John Brown; Fugitive Slave Act, slave codes, antebellum, secession, emancipation, Gettysburg Address, conscription, reconstruction, 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, 15th Amendment, impeach, scalawag, carpetbagger, black codes, Jim Crow, Ku Klux Klan, Freedman’s Bureau, Plessy vs. Ferguson.
• Reflect on the contributions of the following Americans: Horace Mann, Clara Barton, Matthew Brady, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Winfield Scott, George McClellan, “Stonewall” Jackson, Joe Johnston, Wm. Tecumseh Sherman, J.E.B. Stuart.

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