Write a 6-10 page essay (word-processed, double-spaced) exploring and assessing the validity of one of the following statements. Your paper should have a central thesis, and you should develop it in a clear, concise, and coherent fashion. Be sure to support your assertions with specific evidence drawn from a wide variety of the assigned course materials. You are expected to demonstrate command of competing interpretations and to take into account scholarly views that differ from your own. Thus it is not enough simply to affirm your position; you should anticipate plausible objections to your argument and endeavor to refute them. Papers will be evaluated on the basis of both content and presentation. Provide parenthetical notations, footnotes or endnotes for all direct quotations, paraphrased passages, and important assertions derived from the work of others.

Papers are due at the instructor's office (King 141-G) by the end of reading period on Thursday, Dec. 16. Late papers cannot be accepted unless you have received an official "incomplete" in accordance with college regulations.

1. "The Civil War has been rightly termed 'the Second American Revolution.' In the space of less than a decade, the centuries-old institution of slavery was abolished, southern planters lost most of their political power, and ex-slaves gained the right to vote--by any measure, a truly remarkable series of achievements. No longer would the Slave Power threaten the liberty of Americans, either black or white. Moreover, these developments in the public sphere were accompanied by great changes in the private sphere, especially in the South. Most striking was the new control that freedpeople exercised over their families and their labor. Although the Civil War did not usher in an egalitarian utopia, it did transform the basic structures of American life, including those of race, class, and gender."
2. "The reasons for the failure of Reconstruction can be found in the causes of the Civil War. For one thing, northern opposition to slavery had little to do with concern for the exploitation of blacks, and nearly all whites in the North as well as the South believed blacks were by nature inferior. For another, free labor ideology dictated that the market, not the government, should regulate economic affairs and that self-help, not collective action, was the proper response to social inequality. Consequently Reconstruction, even in its most radical phase, focused narrowly on legal rights and political reforms. Blinded by racial prejudice and capitalist doctrine, northern Republicans overwhelmingly rejected any large-scale program of land redistribution in the South, the only real hope the freedpeople had to achieve lasting independence. In retrospect, it seems clear that Reconstruction was doomed before it began."