1. After reading the viewpoints in this chapter do you believe that Reconstruction changed America for the better? Why or why not?
2. In their viewpoints, William Archibald Dunning and Rembert W. Patrick debate the effects of Reconstruction on white and black southerners. Dunning wrote his perspective in 1907, thirty years after the end of Reconstruction, and lived during that era. Patrick wrote in the 1960s, a hundred years after Reconstruction began. Do you believe that Dunning’s understanding of Reconstruction is more nuanced because he was alive during that time, or do you think that Patrick offers a more accurate perspective because the ensuing decades helped eliminate the potential for personal bias? Explain your answers.