Course Number:

Credit Hours:

4

Course Title:

The Civil War and Reconstruction

Course Description:

Examines the causes and conduct of the U.S. Civil War, and the nature and effects of Reconstruction in the South. Topics include abolitionism and other reform efforts in the four decades before the war, constitutional and other political issues in the sectional crisis, territorial expansion as a sectional issue, the nature and economics of slavery and early capitalist formation in the North and South, the centrality of Abraham Lincoln in national politics, the military conduct of the war, technological innovation and its impact on the war, Reconstruction and the rights and plight of freed men and women, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist organizations, and the power of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the ideals of equal rights in national memory.