Civil Water - America before & after!?!?! HELP!!!?

Question

Hey,

I need help with this topic! I need to write 6 page essay!!! And I am not familiar with the american history that much!! Any help willl be great! Thanks!

The Civil War is often considered the watershed that separates early America and modern America.

1.) What were some of the shadows or remnants of early American history that remained?

2.) What were the precursors to our modern America?

3.) Give examples.

THANKS!

Answer 1

Um, isn't the whole point of the assignment to MAKE you "familiar with the American history"? And surely you have one or more textbooks assigned with this course!--and/or some specific 'Net sites listed? So what you need is a way to extract and organize the material you need.

You *ought* to already know how to do that from previous courses in various subjects. But I have to assume that either you were never taught, or you didn't bother to learn. So here's my explanation of the process.

Your first step should be to go thru and note what your books say that the country was like at each stage. (It MAY help to look for words like "character," "element," "component," and "factor.") If you had to buy the book(s), use a highlighter; if you're supposed to return them untouched, write down phrases--with page numbers because you WILL want them later.

IF you can, during the process particularly note anything that you think is the SAME in today's America (about which you presumably know something) for use in #2 of the assignment, using a different highlighter color or a different notes page. But if that sounds overwhelming, just make that a separate second step. (For hiliters, it's convenient to do your first pass with yellow and then use blue in the next step to make green. If you're working with notes, arrows and/or circles work--and so does hiliting!)

Then look thru what you've got and see what ELSE was the same before and after the War, but is not the same in the 21st century U.S.A. (Pink + yellow = a rather sherbetty orange.)

Finally, go thru again looking for examples; they may be right there with what you marked in your first pass, or you may have to do some pawing around.

O course you organize the essay in two parts: Cases where the "shadows or remnants" of early America = 21st c. America, for #2 in the assignment, and cases where they faded some time between the 19th c. and now, for #1. I'd think twice before I'd answer #2 before #1 in my essay, but if it helps your flow . . .

P.S. I suspect a professional historian of the U.S. would be hard pressed to take what has persisted from early America into now and REDUCE it into 6 pp. (If some other answerer wants to go that route, all I can say is: That's not helping with the CoolDude's homework, it's doing it for him, which cheats him of actually learning.)

So you definitely want to work with the sources your teacher expects. But if you simply can't get 6 pp. out of them, THEN you can start looking further afield.

P.P.S. For your grade's sake, NO spelling shortcuts like my "altho" and "thru" above! And capitalize "America(n)" every single time.