Disrupting the North/South Binary: A Deconstruction of Two Social Studies Textbooks' Portrayal of the Reconstruction Era in America (1861-1877)‪.‬

Introduction In American social studies textbooks, the chapters about the critical period between 1861-1877 in our nation's history often characterizes life in the United States dichotomously between the northern states and the southern states. The North is illustrated as increasingly urban, commercial, and industrial while the South is described as largely rural and agricultural. Bifurcated borders delineated by race, class, gender, and the Mason Dixon Line code the North and the South as fixed and separate neglecting both the historical and contemporary heterogeneity of human interactions and lives. While the term "state's rights" is frequently cited as the central debate between the North and South in the mid-nineteenth century, the bifurcating focal point of the political crisis leading up to the costliest and bloodiest conflict in America up to that time is the "peculiar institution" of slavery. Northerners are depicted as generally wanting to abolish slavery all together or at least limit the spread of slavery to the new territories of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Texas in the West, while southerners generally are depicted as wanting to maintain and even expand the institution of slavery.