Answer 3 history questions - Essay Example

However, Lincoln’s tolerance in the matter was criticized by the Radical republicans who were of the absence of any Black civil rights in the Presidential Plan. After all the Blacks were emancipated after the Civil War, the Radicals were now demanding greater rights for them as equal Americans. Abraham Lincoln was the assassinated in 1865 after which President Andrew Johnson passed legislatures in the Southern states which limited the rights of Blacks to a set of codes. Hence, the period under the administration of President Johnson saw laws restricting Black rights and supporting the domination of the Whites (Public Broadcasting Service a, n.pag.).

Along with support from President Johnson and his restrictive Black codes, the Southerners tried to maintain slavery in essence. Anger erupted in the North against the unfair black codes having a detrimental effect on the support for the Presidential Reconstruction. Support for the Radical wing of the Republicans increased and in the next congressional election of 1866, the Radical republicans won. A massive majority of seats won by them allowed them to influence the Reconstruction in the Congress.

Furthermore, it could supersede any refusals of permissions made by Johnson. In the Reconstruction Act passed in 1867, five Southern Confederate states were divided into military districts and gave a framework of how the government would be organized. Southern states were also prescribed to authorize the Fourteenth Amendment so as to allow equal rights and protection for the Black slaves before they were readmitted to the Union. Following the Reconstruction Act the Blacks acquired a say in the government regulations which was a remarkable step in the history of the American politics.

Years later, however, counterrevolutionary players including the Ku Klux Klan would cause reversal of the legislations brought about by the Radical Republicans thereby spurring up hostility and white supremacy in the Southern States (Public Broadcasting Service a, n.pag.). The 1925 film The Birth of a Nation illustrated the same era of the Southern states after the American Civil War. The film distorted the reality of the Reconstruction period by showing the Blacks as dominating the Whites in the South thereby providing glorification of the Ku Klux Klan (Public Broadcasting Service b, n.pag.). 2. John Gast’s painting Manifest Destiny, also known as the American Progress, is a vivid presentation of the American West in the 19th century.

The painting demonstrates the advancements in technology as the conventional travois used by Native Americans is followed by a wagon and then a pony express. Railroads can also be seen where the trains are travelling over the rails. With the construction of railroads after the American Civil War, the West was opened up for settlers across America as well as other continents. When seen sequentially, the painting demonstrates the American Progress as it is with the Native Americans coming in their travois before the European and American explorers came in their carriages and expresses.

Then after them came the farmers and other settlers from other parts of the country via railroads in trains. White settlers arrived from the East crossing the Mississippi while the African American settlers came from the