Way We Were?, The: Suburban Families
The great migration to the suburbs also influences family life and the roles men and women play. The fact that men tend to work in the city is often though to mean that women should care for things at home, an idea reinf..
Way We Were?, The: Suburban Nation, The
By 1960 a third of the nation's population lives in suburbs, an unprecedented demographic shift. The mass production of housing like Levittown creates what some critics call "architectural monotony." The industrial appro..
What Price Freedom: Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, The
Just a few days into his second term in office, Lincoln's life comes to an abrupt end. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln and his wife are attending a play at Ford's Theater when actor John Wilkes Booth slips into t..
What Price Freedom: Confusion and Devastation Marks End of Civil War
In 1865, as it becomes clear that the war is drawing to a close, no one in Washington knows quite what to do. Abraham Lincoln cannot negotiate a treaty with a government he insists has no right to exist, but neither can ..
What Price Freedom: Emancipation and Reunification: Challenges to Peacemaking
There are two primary goals at the end of the Civil War, reuniting the country and emancipation, but no one knows exactly what freedom for blacks means. Freed people know what they want--literacy and land--but taking lan..
What Price Freedom: President Johnson Fast Tracks Re-entry of Southern States
At this very difficult time, Lincoln's Vice President Andrew Johnson becomes President. Johnson is a former slaveholder and wartime governor of Tennessee, a loyal unionist Democrat who was put on the ticket to broaden th..
What Price Freedom: President Johnson impeached by Congress
President Johnson is no longer a serious obstacle to the passage of radical legislation, but he still is the person responsible for administering Reconstruction programs. The Radicals have little confidence in his motiva..
What Price Freedom: Reconstruction and Financial Issues Plague Grant's Administration
The influence of radical Republicans, more progressive as far as blacks are concerned, is diminished as moderate Republicans come into power. They nominate Ulysses S. Grant for the presidency in 1868, perhaps the only ma..
What Price Freedom: Republicans Legislate Harsher Approach to Reconstruction
Republicans in Congress legislate a more radical version of reconstruction through a series of Reconstruction Acts they pass over Johnson's veto. It is clear that they don't want treasons Southerners in Congress within m..
Women and Property in Colonial America
American history professor Alice Kessler-Harris says that, as regards property ownership, women during colonial times were in a very vulnerable position when a husband died and, sometimes, even when a father died. "For t..