Assignment
PART I: COMPARING AND CONTRASTING SECONDARY SOURCES
Directions for PART I: Compare the work of these two historians by answering the following questions. Be sure to support your answers with specific examples drawn from the selections by Dunning and Foner.
1. What is the topic of each excerpt? What period of Reconstruction is the author writing about? What groups are examined in American society?
2. Generally, how does each author portray the Reconstruction process? What in each author's writing leads you to believe that this is how the author feels about Reconstruction? How do those feelings, whether positive or negative, affect each author's point of view?
3. How wold you describe the similarities between these two excerpts?
4. What are the major differences in interpretation between the excerpts?
5. What is the main argument each historian makes about the topic?
6. These two excerpts were written 101 years apart. How might this have influenced the development of their arguments?
PART II: USING PRIMARY SOURCES TO EVALUATE SECONDARY SOURCES
PART II Instructions: Carefully read each of the following primary sources and answer the following questions. Decide how the primary source documents support or refute Dunning's and Foner's arguments about this period. You may find that some documents do both, but for different parts of each historian's interpretation. Be sure to identify which specific components of each historians argument the documents support or refute.
1. Which of the two historian's arguments is best supported by the primary source documents? Or if you find that both arguments are well supported by the evidence, why do you think the two historians had such different interpretations about the period?
2. Based on your comparison of the two arguments and your analysis of the primary sources, how has the interpretation of Reconstruction by historians shifed over time? What can you conclude about historiography from the work of these two historians?