While reading Eric Foner's A Short History of Reconstruction, three of the optional purposes stood out. The three arguments that Foner discussed were: how the Southern society was "remodeled," how reconstruction effected the North, and "centrality of black experiences."

After the Civil War many questions arose to form the essence of Reconstruction. One of the questions that Foner argued was that the South was at a definitive low. They faced empty treasuries by their predecessors, the devastation of war, the new public responsibilities entailed by emancipation, and the task of consolidating an infant political organization. The Emancipation Proclamation was a problem for Reconstruction of the South. It suggested that "the rebelling Southern states could not resume their erstwhile position without far-reaching changes in their society and politics" (16). He states that an ultimate conclusion emerged from the war that the reconstructed South would have to be a society without...