Table of Content
TAKING SIDES: Clashing Views in United States History, Volume 2, Reconstruction to the Present, Thirteenth EditionTable of Contents TAKING SIDES: Clashing Views in United States History, Volume 2, Reconstruction to the Present Thirteenth Edition Unit 1 The Last West, Cities, Immigrants, and The Industrial Revolution Issue 1. Is History True? YES:Oscar Handlin,fromTruth in History(The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979) NO:William H. McNeill,from Mythistory, or Truth, Myth, History, and Historians,”American Historical Review(February 1986) Oscar Handlin insists that historical truth is absolute and knowable by historians who adopt the scientific method of research to discover factual evidence that provides both a chronology and context for their findings. William McNeill argues that historical truth is general and evolutionary and is discerned by different groups at different times and in different places in a subjective manner that has little to do with a scientifically absolute methodology. Issue 2. Was the Wild West More Violent than the Rest of the United States? YES:David T. Courtright,from Frontiers,” in Ronald Gottesman and Richard Maxwell Brown, eds.,Violence in America: An Encyclopedia,vol. 1(Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999) NO:Robert R. Dykstra,from To Live and Die in Dodge City: Body Counts, Law and Order and the Case of Kansas V. Gill,” in Michael A. Bellesiles, ed.,Lethal Imagination, Violence and Brutality in American History(New York University Press, 1999) Professor of history David T. Courtright argues that the cattle, mining, and lumbering western frontiers were extremely violent because these regions were populated by young, single, and transient males who frequented saloons and prostitutes, and engaged in fights. Professor Robert R. Dykstra argues that Dodge City had a low crime rate in the decade 1876–1885, and in the murder case ofKansas v. Gill,it conducted a jury trial according to conventions nurtured through a thousand years of Anglo-American judicial traditions.” Issue 3. Were American Workers in the Gilded Age Conservative Capitalists? YES:Carl N. Degler,fromOut of Our Past: The Forces That Shaped Modern America,3rd ed. (Harper & Row, 1984) NO:Herbert G. Gutman,fromWork, Culture, and Society in Industrializing American: Essays in American Working-Class and Social History(Alfred A. Knopf, 1976) Professor of history Carl N. Degler maintains that the American labor movement accepted capitalism and reacted conservatively to the radical organizational changes brought about in the economic system by big business. Professor of history Herbert G. Gutman argues that from 1843 to 1893, American factory workers attempted to humanize the system through the maintenance of their traditional, artesian, preindustrial work habits. Issue 4. Were Late-Nineteenth-Century Immigrants Uprooted”? YES:Oscar Handlin,fromThe Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People,2nd ed. (Little B
