Course: History 221 United States History Colonial-1877 (Fall 2019)
I chose to take the history course, United States History Colonial-1877, in the Fall semester of 2019. This is a period of time in United States history that I have always found interesting, and I was excited to learn more about it. This class ended up being the most engaging and interesting history course I have ever taken.
The most challenging part of the course was that there were only 3 papers and 3 tests, meaning I had to be sure I put a significant amount of effort and time into every assignment I had. Though the course was a challenge, I enjoyed the material we were learning and writing about and was motivated to listen and learn more. The paper topics were chosen from a book that gave “two sides” or opinions to a specific controversial topic from history. Often times we are taught things from a history book, but not asked to question and think more critically about these occurrences and different stances on them. In this class, students were required to write about which side we agreed with and defend our stance. I specifically enjoyed this type of writing over a research paper, because it not only taught me to think more critically about certain historic events and occurrences, but also to defend my opinions.
One specific question we were asked to answer in our papers was, “Was the Civil War fought over slavery?”. This is a question that remains controversial and argued over. I had a strong opinion on this specific question, and I feel that it was an important topic to bring up given the period of time we were learning about. Though this topic can be considered controversial, I am glad that it was openly discussed, and we were able to do research on our opinions before discussion.
Here is my paper response to the question: “Was the Civil War fought over Slavery?”: