Ernest James Royer Jr
HIS 106
1/29/2025
Hello class, my name Is Ernie/Ernest, I’m a business major focusing on accounting. I have a full-time course load but I’m not a traditional-age college student. I work a full-time bartending job, volunteer firefight, and have a tax prep internship this semester. I’ve never been that passionate about history because it felt like a slow class. However, I’m excited for this class because we will be going over almost 140 years of history in just one semester. My favorite historical period is 1940-1945. My grandfather Ernest Herald Royer, was stationed as an infantry marine in Pearl Harbor and survived the attack. So I’m very much looking forward to our study of WW2. Enough about me, let's jump into the assignment. I haven’t taken a history class in over a decade and feel like I’m walking into a conversation I didn’t hear at the beginning of. Nonetheless, 1865 is a great place to start our sprint through American history.
We begin with the end of the American Civil War, one of the most prominent moments in American history. “The conflict in principle arose from different and opposing ideas as to the nature of what is known as general government.” (Ladenburg 84) These factors boil down to differing interpretations of our constitution/responsibilities of the federal government; Should the federal government be able to tell the states what to do? The answer ended up being yes, or mostly yes nowadays. The government was attempting to free slaves, which affected more than how people viewed African Americans.
Tons of economic factors tied into the argument over slave labor vs free labor. The South refused to let free farming into their territories, and successfully blocked economic expansion by stopping government projects such as railroads. The South also preferred state banks over a national banking system. The South preferred this because it was easier for Southern businesses and farmers to receive currency from state banks without government oversight and regulation. Southerners feared a unified system threatened their economic freedoms, which formed the Confederacy. The Union was formed from Northern states who believed in free labor, no slavery, and federal guidelines to be followed nationwide. Americans were willing to fight and kill other countrymen over these issues, and they did so over four gruesome years.
Confederates lost the American Civil War, in April 1865 when Robert E. Lee, leader of the Confederates, surrendered to General Ulysses S Grant, leader of the Union. Both sides suffered major casualties. The war remains the deadliest conflict in American history, “The equivalent in terms of today’s U.S. population would be 6.2 million dead.”(Wills) By my estimate, that would be roughly 1.88 % of the US population in 2025. The end of the war marked the beginning of the reconstruction era, which lasted from 1865 to 1877. The United States has a lot of cleaning up to do.
I did not use AI to write this except for Grammarly, which I used to clean up my spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
Works Cited
Foner, Eric. “Reconstruction | Definition, Summary, Timeline and Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 May 1999, www.britannica.com/event/Reconstruction-United-States-history/The-end-of-Reconstruction.
Ladenburg, Thomas. Why Do People Fight? The Causes of the Civil War. Digital History, University of Houston, 2007, p. 84, https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/teachers/lesson_plans/pdfs/unit5_17.pdf.
HIS 106
1/29/2025
Hello class, my name Is Ernie/Ernest, I’m a business major focusing on accounting. I have a full-time course load but I’m not a traditional-age college student. I work a full-time bartending job, volunteer firefight, and have a tax prep internship this semester. I’ve never been that passionate about history because it felt like a slow class. However, I’m excited for this class because we will be going over almost 140 years of history in just one semester. My favorite historical period is 1940-1945. My grandfather Ernest Herald Royer, was stationed as an infantry marine in Pearl Harbor and survived the attack. So I’m very much looking forward to our study of WW2. Enough about me, let's jump into the assignment. I haven’t taken a history class in over a decade and feel like I’m walking into a conversation I didn’t hear at the beginning of. Nonetheless, 1865 is a great place to start our sprint through American history.
We begin with the end of the American Civil War, one of the most prominent moments in American history. “The conflict in principle arose from different and opposing ideas as to the nature of what is known as general government.” (Ladenburg 84) These factors boil down to differing interpretations of our constitution/responsibilities of the federal government; Should the federal government be able to tell the states what to do? The answer ended up being yes, or mostly yes nowadays. The government was attempting to free slaves, which affected more than how people viewed African Americans.
Tons of economic factors tied into the argument over slave labor vs free labor. The South refused to let free farming into their territories, and successfully blocked economic expansion by stopping government projects such as railroads. The South also preferred state banks over a national banking system. The South preferred this because it was easier for Southern businesses and farmers to receive currency from state banks without government oversight and regulation. Southerners feared a unified system threatened their economic freedoms, which formed the Confederacy. The Union was formed from Northern states who believed in free labor, no slavery, and federal guidelines to be followed nationwide. Americans were willing to fight and kill other countrymen over these issues, and they did so over four gruesome years.
Confederates lost the American Civil War, in April 1865 when Robert E. Lee, leader of the Confederates, surrendered to General Ulysses S Grant, leader of the Union. Both sides suffered major casualties. The war remains the deadliest conflict in American history, “The equivalent in terms of today’s U.S. population would be 6.2 million dead.”(Wills) By my estimate, that would be roughly 1.88 % of the US population in 2025. The end of the war marked the beginning of the reconstruction era, which lasted from 1865 to 1877. The United States has a lot of cleaning up to do.
I did not use AI to write this except for Grammarly, which I used to clean up my spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
Works Cited
Foner, Eric. “Reconstruction | Definition, Summary, Timeline and Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 May 1999, www.britannica.com/event/Reconstruction-United-States-history/The-end-of-Reconstruction.
Ladenburg, Thomas. Why Do People Fight? The Causes of the Civil War. Digital History, University of Houston, 2007, p. 84, https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/teachers/lesson_plans/pdfs/unit5_17.pdf.