Examining Modern Attributes in Inception

Today, our class finished watching Inception, a movie written and directed by Christopher Nolan who has become one of my favorite directors as of late with his Batman movies. This movie stars Leo DiCaprio and Ellen Page and is touted as one of the best written action movies in recent memories. I had actually never seen the movie before this class and had mostly ignored the hype when it had come out which helped to keep my expectations level when watching and analyzing the movie. The movie itself, in terms of acting and quality of action scenes, was stunning and made it easy for me to focus in on some of the modernist attributes I was assigned to search for within the film.

The first attribute that stood out to me almost immediately was the use of impressionism. A great part of this movie operates around the idea of shifting perspectives, finding out what other characters and even what the characters themselves think and know about certain situations, people and ideas. A great example of this would be when we are first learning about the dream world and how projections of the dreamers sub-conscious would act together with the will of that persons mind to expel outside forces, yet also to accept ideas if the dreamer can believe that they thought of the idea themselves.

Also, another modernist attribute that pops up a great deal in this movie is that of using and creating landscapes in symbolic and metaphoric ways. Usually in literature, this means that names of places are usually assigned due to metaphorical relation with the reality that is that place. In the movie, this is taken a step further as the dreamer is able to create their own world and populate it with whatever they want, and many times those places hold metaphorical meaning in relation to events and happenings in that persons real life. I found this to be expemplifed with a persons need to "lock away dark secrets" Which in reality means to keep them to yourself but in the dream means to literally lock away your ideas, like in a prison or a safe.

The final modernist attribute that jumped out at me during the movie was the use of time in a more abstract sense. In modernist literature, authors began to use time differently then it had always been defined; as a constant, scalar quantity. Authors began to give time depth and meaning by allowing for time to seemingly stretch and shrink as well as allow for movement through time both backwards and forwards. Time in inception is especially important because in a dream, time moves much slower in relativity to the real world which allowed for crazy extensions of time to allow for Leo and his gang to complete the task at hand. Time is also given even greater depth with the introduction of limbo, where times relativity to the outside world is basically nonexistent.

A Novice Examines Modernist Literature

Modernist literature is not exactly high on my list of categories to browse through at the local Barnes and Noble. Perhaps it was previous experiences with English class literature that turned me sour but I was never one to read fiction that was written before the 1950's, and even then I found myself struggling to make it through such classics as To Kill A Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye. In fact, one of the only stories I have ever read in English class and gone back to reread on my own time was Hatchet which ended up becoming one of my favorite books to date. There was something about the precise descriptions and details of Brian's every action as he fought for survival that kept me enthralled through the whole story.

As I started the assigned summer reading this year I was pleasantly surprised. Unlike the extreme mundane description of average English life that last years summer reading portrayed that bored me too tears, I found books with exciting plots with dark twists and turns that really kept me interested. However, the real beauty I found in these books was the  amount of detail of the world around the characters as the story progressed, especially in Tender is the Night. Post World War 1 Europe was a dismal continent which I learned much about last year in History class, but was never fully interested in until I read this book. I don't think I really understood how much impact the  first World War had on the psyche and culture of Europe until I was reading about Dick and Nicole traveling and experiencing it. I was also very interested in how each detail in stories like the three we read can be interpreted in so many different ways. It was enthralling to think about things like whether Esther's feeling of being under a bell jar was due to being a social anomaly or whether it was because she felt everyone had their eyes on her at all time. In short, I am excited to keep reading these stories in and out of class as the year continues and seeing if this literature will have a positive effect on my learning experience.

Crossing the Atlantic: Post #3

This is the third post of four that will be published here about European immigration and the enduring understandings that dictated the roles of people, places and power within this event. The previous blog posts were very similar, the first summarizing the key terms that were found to help define just what European immigration was, who were involved and how they lived. After these posts were written, I was able to join a small group of other students and compare and contrast the key terms and enduring understanding s that each of us found to define the event of European immigration. I was astonished at how my group was able to expand on my previous knowledge and build an even stronger foundation of key terms and understandings to help guide the group on its way to the final product. One such way our helped to expand on my knowledge of the topic was to find the best enduring understandings from our group as a whole, and expand off of those understandings. I personally thought my previous understandings were a little weak, but our group was able to adapt and add stronger ones that further expanded on European immigration, such as adding the understanding that "People in power tend to be threatened by competition from outsiders, and thus take steps to limit the potential power of those underneath them." This one understanding is able to incorporate both people and power in an easy to research understanding that still applies to the world we live in today. We also had the idea to help organize and expand our knowledge of the key terms by grouping them by when those specific terms most effected immigrants and those around them. Organizing the key terms this way helped our presentation to flow more evenly and allow us seamless transition through each phase of immigration.
Once our group had optimized the research we had previously gathered, we started to put it together in a video that we had been assigned to help spread the information we had found to other students in our class. Simply put, our group was tasked with creating a photo essay, but in the format of a video, which entails a slideshow of pictures is played and each picture has a caption that is read by a member of our group. I was overall very impressed with how seamlessly my group was able to take the information we had gathered previously and compress it into short captions that were able to give large amounts of information in a small frame of time. Each group member was tasked with further research and citing of the original sources, as well as creating the short captions for the video essay. Each person had equal amounts of work to do and our group worked fluidly and there were very few hiccups in the research or writing of the script. The final product is something I feel our entire group can be proud of, it gives interesting and important information about European immigration and the conditions immigrants had to endure in a time frame of only sixty seconds. I don't feel there were any missteps during the group phase and I believe the class will be able to become well-informed on the issues that surrounded Europeans immigration to America, and what people, places and power were able to influence those issues.

Crossing the Atlantic: Post #2

This will be the second of four blog posts in this assignment that covers and explains the significance of people, places and power in European immigration to America. Since the last post, I have been exposed to new source material that allows for a more in-depth look at how immigrants arrived in this country from Europe, as well as how they lived and were treated in the months or even years after their arrival. One activity lays out, step by step what it was like to pass through Ellis Island (http://teacher.scholastic.com/ACTIVITIES/immigration/tour/index.htm), whilst the other activity allows for a closer look into tenements lived in by immigrant and their families while they were fresh off the boat and looking for work (http://www.tenement.org/Virtual_Tour/vt_rogar.html). Each source is able to expand on just how people, places and power was each significant in its own way by allowing for new insight into each topic as well as a new perspective from the readings that were analyzed in the last post.

Key terms

• Immigration: Immigration is defined as the act of moving to a country of which one is not native, usually with the intention to permanently stay. During the early 20th century, many immigrants came from European countries that had struggling economies or suffered from famines or other disasters. They would then gather everything they had and take it across the ocean to America, having to travel through Ellis Island to be approved. 
• Pogroms: Pogroms were the organized persecution of Jews in Russia during the late 19th and early 20th century. They ranged from random acts of vandalism to violence and murders. These Pogroms drove many Jewish family out of Russia and eastern Europe, many of whom immigrated to America to try and find a better life, free of persecution. 
• Ellis Island: Ellis Island is a small island in the New York bay that formerly was the center of immigration in New York, and the US, as a whole. It was open from 1892 to 1943 and accepted almost 8 million immigrants who wished to enter and live as Americans. The main job of the island was to hold immigrants for inspection before allowing them to actually enter the country. 
• Quarantine: Quarantine, in this case, refers to the section of Ellis Island where immigrants who were deemed unfit to enter the country where held for further examination. Reasons for being quarantined raged from mental health problems to all sorts of physical disabilities, whether small or egregious. 
• Ghettos: The Ghettos were a sectioned off area of many big cities in the US during the early 20th century where immigrants where able to buy homes. Usually kept in awful condition and crammed with people, sometimes 10 to a room, they were horrid places to live, but the immigrants had little choice and the ghettos in many of the cities remained full of immigrants until the later half of the 20th century.
• Restrictive covenants Restrictive covenants where laws and agreements set up by owners of buildings and tenements in large US cities which restricted, or even prohibited, the sale or renting of the housing to immigrants. They were implemented as a way for the building owners to keep immigrants away from their property and asserted their power over the immigrants.They made it extremely difficult for immigrants to find housing in the early stages of US immigration.  
• Tenements Tenements were the apartments or housing that were found in the ghettos, usually extremely small and overcrowded with immigrant families. Usually, these were the only options for immigrants who were just starting in America.
• Immigrants The people who immigrated from their home to America in search of a better life, came from a wide variety of European backgrounds, with many different reasons for immigrating.
• Steerage The tight, enclosed space on a ship where many immigrants were forced to reside in whilst they crossed the Atlantic. Cramped conditions and poor supplies usually made these journies hell for the passengers, who had no other options on how to escape their old lives and start fresh. 
• Sweat shops Some of the only work available to immigrants at the time was working in sweatshops.These jobs had grueling hours with back breaking labor for extremely small pay. Many immigrants were abused at these jobs, as well as having to deal with the labor itself which was also quite dangerous, most of it having to do with the textile business.
• Americanized The process of adopting American culture and trying to replace your own culture in favor of it. Usually undertaken by immigrants who felt that with their new life they must forget their old customs and adopt as many American customs as possible, so as to truly become Americans.
• Greenhorn: one who has arrived in a new country but has not localized to the customs and culture in the new country
• Immigration act: passed in 1924, the act established immigrant quotas designed to reduce immigration from southern and eastern Europe.

Enduring Understandings:

1. It is difficult for someone to pack up their whole life and move to a new country to start over.

• Many immigrants, including Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, had little options when it came to traveling to their new home and often were forced to be crammed inside a ships steerage for weeks or even months. (Transitions, p.265)
• When it came to work, there were few options for immigrants to earn steady pay, most had to work grueling hours in sweatshops for a fraction of the income of their native countrymen. (Transitions, p.272)
• Immigrants were confined to cramped tenement housing within ghettos constructed solely for immigrants and the ultra poor. There may have been as many as 10-12 people per apartment or about 150 to a floor in the early buildings. (America: Pathways to the Present p.530)
• Once the immigrants arrived at Ellis Island, they were examined for even the smallest imperfection or disability, and if an immigrant was suspected of being sick, they were immediately quarantined and might have been deported. 
• Even such trivial things as not having the correct amount of money on you as you tried to enter the country was enough for an immigrant, and even their entire family to be denied access to the US, and in some cases deported to their homeland. (Virtual Ellis Island, 7th stop)

2. People who held power over others tend to take steps to limit the potential of people under them.

• Land and building owners during the immigration boom would usually strike deals called Restrictive Covenants, which limited or even prohibited immigrants from buying housing in wealthier neighborhoods, giving them little choice but to rent tenement housing in ghettos. (America: Pathways to the Present p.531)
• The immigration act of 1924 was put into place by the government to limit the amount of immigrants that were allowed to enter the country from certain countries. This was because many Americans were tired of having to deal with the increasing amount of immigrants, and were scared that they would soon eclipse them in success. (Transitions, p.287)
• Sweat shops, the places were most immigrants were forced to work, provided dangerous work to immigrants for extremely small pay and most of the time the immigrants were also harassed by their American bosses.

3. The power one person controlled is usually dictated by the amount of money they control. 

• If an immigrant did not meet the requirement of having twenty dollars when they first enter the country, he might be deported. Therefore, some immigrants charged a small fee for allowing others to borrow their twenty dollars to show the immigration officers, then return it once they passed legal examination. (Virtual Ellis Island, 7th stop)
• As many immigrants entered the country with only a few dollars to their names, they had little power over where they could and could not live or work. Immigrants would only be offered certain tenements to live in, many of which were only two or three rooms for a whole family. Still this housing would require a majority, if not all an immigrant families  money. (Virtual Tenement tour)
• As some Jewish immigrants began to become more successful in the working world, some American businesses and families tried to limit the rights some immigrants had, including their ability to find a job and apply to certain educational institutes. (Transitions, p.288)

In this particular historic event, it is not hard to pinpoint the group that inhabits the bottom of the power structure, the immigrants themselves. The immigrants controlled the least assets when they entered the country and did not have the some rights to fair labor or housing agreements that other Americans at the time were privileged to. The second an immigrant steps off the boat and onto American soil, they are forced to endure and pass rigorous inspection to ensure that they would be able to pull their weight the second they left Ellis Island and integrated into American society. They wee then, as mentioned before, restricted in the housing they could rent and work they could do even if they passed the previous inspection. Immigrants had seldom options other than renting an extremely cramped and derelict tenement for themselves and their family, as well as being relegated to working long hours in sweatshops and other factory settings doing dangerous work for measly wages. The first few months, the settling in and finding a place to live and work, would be hellish because it was very realistic that they might not find a place to live or a place to work and without these essentials, it is very unlikely that those immigrants or their families would be able to attain steady lives in their foreseeable future. Even after the essentials were taken care of, more subtle topics like racism and acts against lower working classes would demoralize some immigrants because many of them had come to America to escape persecution or racism in their home country, and now they arrive in a country of promise and bright futures, and they must once again deal with the racism they fought so hard to escape. Most immigrants wanted nothing more than a brighter future, greater opportunity than what they could be offered in their real homes, but unfortunately many Americans took advantage of these immigrants by making them work their fingers to the bone for just a fraction of the freedoms and rights they deserved. 

Crossing the Atlantic: Post #1

Immigration, one of the contributing factors that helped shape the diverse country called the United States of America. Since America had been formed, when it was still just a group of thirteen small and differentiated colonies, immigration had been part of American life and helped to shape the very foundation of the country. However, immigration to the States did not reach its peak until the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, when people from all over the world, mainly small European countries, poured into New York City and other major ports to try and start a new life in the country that was said to have "streets paved with gold." The major point of this post and the posts following will be to, by analyzing history from that time, discover the significance of people, places and power within European immigration to America.

Key terms

• Immigration: Immigration is defined as the act of moving to a country of which one is not native, usually with the intention to permanently stay. During the early 20th century, many immigrants came from European countries that had struggling economies or suffered from famines or other disasters. They would then gather everything they had and take it across the ocean to America, having to travel through Ellis Island to be approved. 
• Pogroms: Pogroms were the organized persecution of Jews in Russia during the late 19th and early 20th century. They ranged from random acts of vandalism to violence and murders. These Pogroms drove many Jewish family out of Russia and eastern Europe, many of whom immigrated to America to try and find a better life, free of persecution. 
• Ellis Island: Ellis Island is a small island in the New York bay that formerly was the center of immigration in New York, and the US, as a whole. It was open from 1892 to 1943 and accepted almost 8 million immigrants who wished to enter and live as Americans. The main job of the island was to hold immigrants for inspection before allowing them to actually enter the country. 
• Quarantine: Quarantine, in this case, refers to the section of Ellis Island where immigrants who were deemed unfit to enter the country where held for further examination. Reasons for being quarantined raged from mental health problems to all sorts of physical disabilities, whether small or egregious. 
• Ghettos: The Ghettos were a sectioned off area of many big cities in the US during the early 20th century where immigrants where able to buy homes. Usually kept in awful condition and crammed with people, sometimes 10 to a room, they were horrid places to live, but the immigrants had little choice and the ghettos in many of the cities remained full of immigrants until the later half of the 20th century.
• Restrictive covenants Restrictive covenants where laws and agreements set up by owners of buildings and tenements in large US cities which restricted, or even prohibited, the sale or renting of the housing to immigrants. They were implemented as a way for the building owners to keep immigrants away from their property and asserted their power over the immigrants.They made it extremely difficult for immigrants to find housing in the early stages of US immigration.  
• Tenements Tenements were the apartments or housing that were found in the ghettos, usually extremely small and overcrowded with immigrant families. Usually, these were the only options for immigrants who were just starting in America.
• Immigrants The people who immigrated from their home to America in search of a better life, came from a wide variety of European backgrounds, with many different reasons for immigrating.
• Steerage The tight, enclosed space on a ship where many immigrants were forced to reside in whilst they crossed the Atlantic. Cramped conditions and poor supplies usually made these journies hell for the passengers, who had no other options on how to escape their old lives and start fresh. 
• Sweat shops Some of the only work available to immigrants at the time was working in sweatshops.These jobs had grueling hours with back breaking labor for extremely small pay. Many immigrants were abused at these jobs, as well as having to deal with the labor itself which was also quite dangerous, most of it having to do with the textile business.
• Americanized The process of adopting American culture and trying to replace your own culture in favor of it. Usually undertaken by immigrants who felt that with their new life they must forget their old customs and adopt as many American customs as possible, so as to truly become Americans.
• Task system: process of assigning a work quota to a team of ten to twenty workers, usually related by blood or neighbors. The group worked as a unit, each being assigned a specific task, and the group was paid as a unit as well.
• Section system: work divided into several steps and workers completed one task repeatedly, early assembly line
• Greenhorn: one who has arrived in a new country but has not localized to the customs and culture in the new country
• Immigration act: passed in 1924, the act established immigrant quotas designed to reduce immigration from southern and eastern Europe.

Enduring Understandings:

1. It is difficult for someone to pack up their whole life and move to a new country to start over.

• Many immigrants, including Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, had little options when it came to traveling to their new home and often were forced to be crammed inside a ships steerage for weeks or even months. (Transitions, p.265)
• When it came to work, there were few options for immigrants to earn steady pay, most had to work grueling hours in sweatshops for a fraction of the income of their native countrymen. (Transitions, p.272)
• Immigrants were confined to cramped tenement housing within ghettos constructed solely for immigrants and the ultra poor. There may have been as many as 10-12 people per apartment or about 150 to a floor in the early buildings. (America: Pathways to the Present p.530)
• Once the immigrants arrived at Ellis Island, they were examined for even the smallest imperfection or disability, and if an immigrant was suspected of being sick, they were immediately quarantined and might have been deported. 

2. People who held power over others take steps to limit the potential of people under them.

• Land and building owners during the immigration boom would usually strike deals called Restrictive Covenants, which limited or even prohibited immigrants from buying housing in wealthier neighborhoods, giving them little choice but to rent tenement housing in ghettos. (America: Pathways to the Present p.531)
• The immigration act of 1924 was put into place by the government to limit the amount of immigrants that were allowed to enter the country from certain countries. This was because many Americans were tired of having to deal with the increasing amount of immigrants, and were scared that they would soon eclipse them in success. (Transitions, p.287)
• Sweat shops, the places were most immigrants were forced to work, provided dangerous work to immigrants for extremely small pay and most of the time the immigrants were also harassed by their American bosses.

So far, it is easy to see that European immigration to America shows the significance of the theme people, places and power. Each theme is significant in its own way, each of which is able to, when joined together, define the struggles that immigrants had as they travel from their old home countries and arrive in America. For people, the diversity plays a large role because with each new person entering America looking for a new life, it creates ethnic melting pots in large American cities, which helps to shape America as we see it today as many cultures from around the world are represented and accepted in America. The people also provide labor to a still burgeoning American economy, aiding in the expansion of such businesses as the textile business. Places are represented in European immigration as soon as the immigrants step off the boat, as most immigrants had to pass through the famous Ellis Island in New York City before being admitted into the country. Next, the ghettos and tenements that many immigrants lived in, although not the most attractive parts of American cities, help to promote city growth and begin the mentality to build up, rather than out. This resulted in tall building s and skyscrapers being constructed to quell the ever growing population, many of which still dot the skyline of American cities today. Power was a large influence during the early and later stages of European immigration. During the early stages, American land owners tried to assert their power over immigrants by signing acts such as restrictive covenants which prohibited immigrants from buying land in nicer areas, confining them to the ghettos and tenements where most immigrants lived. Nearing the later years of European immigration, many Americans pushed for and passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which limited and even prohibited immigration from certain European countries because Americans had begun to fear that the immigrants would begin to overtake them in important areas such as education and job quality. These three components together have begun to take shape and create the conditions that immigrants endured when they first arrived in America. 

DBQ; Who Killed Reconstruction?

American History recalls the death of Reconstruction as a dark and conflicting time for all citizens, especially blacks. It is , therefore, quite ironic that the death of reconstruction can be traced back to the year 1876, the centennial  anniversary of Americans coming together as a nation and gaining independence from their previous rulers, the British empire. Reconstruction in this case was the governments attempt at reintegrating the southern states under laws that would be beneficial for the whole nation.The Reconstruction effort officially ended after the 1876 presidential election, which had the democrat Tilden who, although he won the popular vote,  eventually lost the election to the republican Hayes due to his victory in the electoral college. The end of reconstruction was also aided by the enactment of the Compromise of 1877, formally removing all federal troops from southern states. Taking these actions into account, is it possible for one half of the country, the north or the South, to retain greater responsibility for the death of reconstruction? Although both the North and the South are both partially to blame, the South is more responsible for the ultimate death of the Reconstruction.
The Northern states, although not as egregious in their contribution to the death of Reconstruction, should not be overlooked entirely. The north contributed to the death of Reconstruction in several ways, many of which are very different than how the south contributed. The first and foremost action taken by the North that helped kill Reconstruction was almost completely neglecting the efforts of the Reconstruction. An example of this neglect can be found when Ulysses S. Grant became president, as he shifted most of his efforts and resources towards weeding out corruption that had built up in the government over time. (Doc C) This left small amounts of resources that were able to be put towards aiding the reconstruction effort, and lead to a sharp drop in northern support for reconstruction. Also, throughout northern news and media, blacks were still being portrayed as dumb oafs unfit for government positions, or any positions of power at all. (Doc D) This shows that northern americans, although more open to the idea of freedom for all, most were not ready to accept Blacks as equals in any aspect, which just fueled the flame that helped immolate the Reconstruction.
The Southern states contributed to the death of Reconstruction, not only in similar ways as the North, but in different ways as well. The Southern states had a much tougher time trying to have the Reconstruction accepted by the population, as a large chunk of it was still bitter over being forced to release their slaves near the end of the Civil War. The bitterness of a few confederate veterans ended up spewing over as they formed the Klu Klux Klan, a pro-white terror group that would lead the charge against reconstruction in the south. The KKK tried to use fear to persuade blacks from participating in any of the freedoms they had been granted. One such action taken by the Klan was to intercept blacks before they were to vote, interrogate them to find out who they were to vote for, and if they disagreed with the blacks decision they did not hesitate to violently whip and beat the blacks. (Doc D) This awful abuse was able to scare many blacks from voicing their opinion on the Reconstruction, and aided in killing Reconstruction all together. The KKK was so ruthless in its efforts to defeat black’s rights that they even targeted whites who supported the Reconstruction. One such man targeted was senator John Stephens, who was stabbed multiple times and then hung from a hook in the grand jury room, all because he had spoken for the rights of blacks in America. (Doc A) This fear mongering scared many supporters away from speaking for Reconstruction,  and aided in its downfall.
To summarize, although both parties were major contributors towards the death of Reconstruction, it was the South that provided the proverbial killing blows to the Reconstruction, making them more responsible than the North for its demise.  The South was the birthplace of the KKK, a ruthless terror group that rampantly snuffed out large amounts of support for Reconstruction in the south, not afraid to target any man, regardless of skin color, as long as you were against their cause. The north contributed more by just ignoring the Reconstruction, not openly opposing it but instead focusing on other important topics during the time. Perhaps if the Reconstruction had been successful, racism and segregation in America might have been snuffed out completely by the start of the 20th century, instead of having to wait another sixty ought years for it to be even challenged. America may have been and might still be a simpler place to live if its inhabitants were able to look past the color of ones skin and see a person for whom they really are.

The Civil War; Turning of the Tide

Nearing the later years of the American civil war, Abraham Lincoln was beginning to fear the possibility of his army being unable to conquer and reintegrate the Confederate States of America. His forces had suffered important losses at such battles as Chancellorsville as well as Cold Harbor. Worse so, residents of the union had begun to lose faith in their leader and the war as a whole. Although General Grant had begun an important march onto Vicksburg and even further south, the rumors and tales of the might of his opposition, General Lee, had northern citizens in a frenzy as the union did not have an exact position on him, but knew that he was closing in on the north. Lincoln was forced to make a decision; he appointed George Meade as the new commander of the Union Army and told him to prepare a defensive force to fight the confederates at a small Pennsylvania farm town named Gettysburg. The Confederate and Union soldiers, who's combined numbers during the battle peaked at around 180,000 men, fought brutal warfare in the hills around Gettysburg for three days and amassing a total of around 48,000 troops combined and making it one of the bloodiest battles ever fought on American soil. At the end of the three days, the Union had successfully suppressed the Confederate push and forced General Lee to retreat with his remaining troops. Although the casualties on either side were of similar amount, the fact that the union was able to suppress the attack allowed the union to claim victory for its own. This union victory combined with other union victories on the western front and a mass shortage of supplies available to the Confederates created a turning point in the war, allowing the North to gain momentum and push through the Confederates and eventually win the war. This drastic change can also be viewed in General Lee's letters to the President of the Confederate States grew more and more desperate as time went by, portraying the lack of supplies and high death toll that had resulted from a loss at Gettysburg.
When the North did march upon the southern territory to try and regain it and win the war, General Grant and his other officers employed a form of total war to gain as much of an advantage as possible over the Confederates. Total war describes a way of fighting ones enemy using any means to try and defeat them. In this case, the Union army was not afraid to burn crops, slaughter farm animals, sabotage railways and even evict civilians from their homes all in the name of a faster and more painless victory through attrition. These acts should be viewed as just acts of war because, although they involved interrupting and altering southern civilians way of life, these acts guaranteed the Union a faster path to victory and reunification of the north and the south. Once the country is made whole again, the citizens involved can be justly reprimanded and peace and prosperity can be restored throughout the country. This could all be made a reality as quickly as possible with a Union victory which provides a just cause for the use of total war so as to attain greater prosperity for the whole nation.
As the war came to a close, the country itself was in mourning. Yes, in the literal sense of the word, the Union had won the war as they had the army left standing and the goals of the war met. However, the US was once again reunified and the sheer loss of life, not Confederate or Union anymore, but American life was staggering. Many soldiers on both sides of the fighting were relived that the fighting had ended and many more wanted nothing more than to return to peace once again and rejoin their brothers from both the north and the south. Northerners were relieved that the war had to come to an end as they had almost completely exhausted their will to fight by the end of it. Blacks at the time rejoiced as they had finally gained the freedom they had sought for generations, yet they would soon come to realize it was freedom in a much different sense that what they believed in. As for the south, many southerners were resentful of Lincoln and the north for forcing their ideals and stealing their property in the form of the slaves that had been freed. This resentment would lead to the creation of anti-government groups that would stop at nothing to try and secede once again from the Union. One such group, piloted by one John Wilkes Booth, did eventually succeed in damaging the Union government by assassinating President Lincoln just five days after the war had ended. Shock permeated the country as one of the most influential leaders in US history lay dead in a small Inn within Washington D.C. Although the president had been killed, Confederate sympathizers were never able to successfully rekindle the rebellion and soon the country began to march forward, as America always had, into the future with advancement, liberty and prosperity as its main goals.

sources:
Battle of Gettysburg DBQ: http://www.edline.net/files/_zGHaC_/96f92692263e53293745a49013852ec4/Gettysburg_DBQ_-_Student_Version.pdf
Ken Burns Civil War videos