Comparison in Period 5 in two minutes
- In 1844 the nation had 13 free and 13 slave states and a small federal government. By 1877 slavery had ended, the Union had survived, and wartime measures had enlarged federal power.
- The war settled two questions: a state could not leave the Union, and a person could not be property. The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) ended slavery, and the Fourteenth (1868) defined citizenship.
- It left open how far federal power should reach and who counted as a full citizen. The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) barred race-based voting limits, yet violence pushed Black voters from the polls.
- Continuity limited the change. Sharecropping, convict leasing and violence kept many freedpeople poor and powerless, women could vote almost nowhere, and most Native Americans did not gain citizenship until 1924.
- Frederick Douglass's 1876 speech judged Lincoln slow by abolitionist standards but swift by the standard of public opinion, a model of complexity that weighs two standards.
- Memories diverged. Stephens called slavery the Confederacy's cornerstone in 1861 but in 1868 said the war was over states' rights, and Du Bois challenged the Dunning School's account of Reconstruction in 1935.
- On the exam: comparison prompts ask what changed most between 1844 and 1877 or how Reconstruction compared with the civil rights era. State a claim, support it, then name its limits.
Topic 5.12 key terms
- Secession
A state's withdrawal from the Union. Eleven Southern states seceded in 1860 and 1861 to protect slavery. The federal government said no state could legally leave, so in Washington's eyes they were still states, and the salute counted them.
- Confederate States of America
The government the seceding Southern states formed in February 1861, with Jefferson Davis as its president. It claimed to be a separate country. The Union never accepted that claim.
- Compensated emancipation
Freeing enslaved people and paying their owners for the loss. Congress did this in Washington, D.C., in April 1862, offering owners up to an average of $300 a person. Owners had to file petitions to be paid.
- Sectionalism
Putting your own region's interests ahead of the nation's. By 1844 the states split evenly, 13 slave and 13 free, so each side held half the Senate.
- Unit 5 · Learning Objective M
Compare the relative significance of the effects of the Civil War on American values.
- Comparison
A reasoning process: describe similarities and differences between two moments or developments, and explain why they matter.
- Relative significance
Judging which of several changes or causes mattered most, and defending that judgment with evidence.
- Continuity and change
A reasoning process: describe what stayed the same and what changed over a period, and explain why each matters.
- Historically defensible claim
The AP essay's thesis point: answer the question with a claim that history can support, and give a line of reasoning for it.
- Complexity
The AP essay's point for a sophisticated argument. You earn it with evidence that corroborates, qualifies or modifies your claim, or by weighing more than one perspective.
- Key Concept 5.3
The Union victory in the Civil War and the contested reconstruction of the South settled the issues of slavery and secession, but left unresolved many questions about the power of the federal government and citizenship rights. (The CED's own words.)
- States' rights
The argument that states, not the federal government, hold final authority over many questions. In the 1800s, Southern leaders used it to defend slavery and to justify secession.
- Second Reconstruction
The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which won court decisions and federal laws by relying on the 14th and 15th Amendments (Unit 8).
- John Brown's raid
In October 1859 the abolitionist John Brown led a small armed raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to start a slave uprising. Virginia hanged him on December 2, 1859. Many Northerners mourned him as a martyr. Many white Southerners saw a plot against them, and the raid deepened the split that led to secession.
- Westward expansion
After the Civil War, railroads, settlers and the army pushed across the Great Plains. Two 1862 laws opened the way: the Homestead Act offered 160 acres of public land to settlers, and the Pacific Railway Act funded a transcontinental railroad. Native nations lost land and lives in the Plains wars that followed. This is the story of AP Period 6.
- Gilded Age
The name for the United States from roughly the 1870s to the 1890s, taken from Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner's 1873 novel. Under a thin gold surface: fast industrial growth, huge fortunes, political corruption, and bitter fights between workers and owners. This is the setting of AP Period 6.
- Citizenship Clause
The first sentence of the 14th Amendment (1868): 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.' It overturned the core of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which had held that Black Americans could not be citizens.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
Noon
December 2, 1863
Key terms: Secession, Confederate States of America, Compensated emancipation
The U.S. Capitol December 2, 1863
Noon, December 2, 1863. Atop the new Capitol dome, workmen haul up the last piece of a bronze statue. Her name is Freedom. This is her head.
A battery below fired thirty-five guns, one for each state. That count included eleven states at war with Washington. Then the forts around the city answered.
Her sculptor first gave her a liberty cap, the kind freed slaves wore in ancient Rome. The Secretary of War objected.
Jefferson Davis
…its history renders it inappropriate to a people who were born free and would not be enslaved.
She got a helmet instead. By the day she rose, Davis was president of the Confederacy.
She was cast at Clark Mills's foundry, outside the city. One of the men who helped cast her was a man Mills owned: Philip Reid.
In April 1862 Congress freed about three thousand enslaved people in the capital. Reid was one. Mills filed a claim for him. Fifteen hundred dollars.
When Freedom rose, the man who had her cap taken off was leading a rebellion. The man who helped cast her was free.
Between 1844 and 1877 the country changed in a hundred ways. Which changes mattered most?
A Wooden Dome
1844–1866
Key terms: Sectionalism, Unit 5 · Learning Objective M, Comparison, Relative significance
In 1844 the Capitol wore a low wooden dome under copper. Samuel Morse had just tapped "What hath God wrought" to Baltimore.
The flag had twenty-six stars. Thirteen of those states allowed slavery. Thirteen did not.
In 1855 and 1856 the wooden dome came down. Its replacement: cast iron, nearly nine million pounds of it.
When Lincoln took the oath in 1861, the new dome was a stump with a crane on top.
That spring, up to four thousand soldiers bunked in the Capitol. Ovens in the basement could bake sixteen thousand loaves a day.
In May 1861 Washington stopped paying for the dome. The contractor kept building anyway.
Legend gives Lincoln the credit. The records say the company had 1.3 million pounds of iron sitting on the grounds.
By Lincoln's second inauguration, the outside was finished.
That April, his coffin lay in the Rotunda beneath it.
Same building, 1844 and 1877. In between, a war. The exam asks our question in its own words.
COMPARE · WEIGH
Put two moments side by side. See what changed and what didn't. Then decide which change was biggest, and say why.
The Climb
May 1865
Key terms: Continuity and change, Historically defensible claim
May 1865. The war is all but over. A hundred and eighty feet up, a painter named Constantino Brumidi is still at work on the sky.
Between the domes, 365 steps climb through the iron. Four landings, and on each, one plate with two faces. It's 1865, but the plates can see ahead to 1877.
Swing each plate. See what changed, and what stayed. At the top, you'll choose the change that mattered most.
Two Standards
1863–1877
Key terms: Complexity, Key Concept 5.3, States' rights, Second Reconstruction
Whatever you chose, a strong answer does two things. It makes a claim. Then it admits what the claim leaves out.
The war settled two questions. A state could not leave the Union. A person could not be property.
It left two open. How far federal power should reach. And who counted as a full citizen.
Thirteen days before Freedom rose, Lincoln had said what the war was for.
Abraham Lincoln
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—
Americans kept arguing about what that meant. Eleven years to the day after Lincoln was shot, Frederick Douglass spoke a mile east of the dome.
Freed people raised $16,242 for the statue behind him. The first five dollars came from Charlotte Scott, her first earnings in freedom.
Frederick Douglass
Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent;
Frederick Douglass
but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult,
Frederick Douglass
he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.
Two standards, and he tells you which one he's using. That's complexity, done by a master.
Not everyone remembered the war the same way. In 1861 Alexander Stephens called slavery the Confederacy's cornerstone.
In 1868 he published a book arguing the war had been about the Constitution and the rights of states.
In April 1877, federal troops stopped guarding the last Republican governments in the South. The amendments stayed in the Constitution.
In the 1950s and 1960s, a new generation used them to win civil rights in court and in Congress. Historians call it the Second Reconstruction.
Freedom Faces East
1863 → 1877
Key terms: John Brown's raid, Westward expansion, Gilded Age, Citizenship Clause
Back to noon, December 2, 1863.
One reporter noticed the date: four years earlier, to the day, Virginia had hanged John Brown.
…the coincidence is worthy of remark.
A writer at the New York Tribune thought of the man who helped cast her.
Was there a prophecy in that moment when the slave became the artist,
and with rare poetic justice, reconstructed the beautiful symbol of freedom for America?
Freedom faces east, over the Capitol's front door. The country was about to turn west.
In 1877 the Washington Monument was still a stump.
Mark Twain
It has the aspect of a factory chimney with the top broken off.
Their novel gave the next era its name: the Gilded Age. Railroads, wars on the Plains, factories and cities. That's Period 6.
Philip Reid spent the rest of his life in Washington: he married, had a son, and worked as a plasterer. He died in 1892. In 1844 the law called him property. By 1877 it called him a citizen.