The west was known to be a free, wild frontier where people could go to start over and get land for cheap.  The paintings by the “rocky mountain school” showed extravagant landscapes which were not true. Most people thought that no one lived in the west but many types of people lived there they were not expecting this which caused so competition which brought the military into the west clearing out places for Americans to live. The West was falsely composed but because of all of the picture and the book “The Virginian” the west and the American Cowboy was shown as a rugged place full of rigged individuals. 

As people moved towards the West they weren't ready for what they expected. The people were expecting vast landscapes with lots of farming land. This is where the idea of a cowboy and the free man arose from the press. When the settlers got to the West they found things they weren't expecting like Indians, Chinese, Canadian, Hispanic and many other types of people whom had taken all of the good farming land.

The idea of the cow boy was a rugged individualist who did what he wants and was manly. The cowboy was a respected person who was a hero in stories and was displayed as a southern gentleman type of attitude. Yet many people didn't know about the real cowboy.. A real cowboy was at the bottom of the social ladder and he was the lowest paid job anyone could find. They worked with cattle all day with many physical pains and loneliness was a major factor. It boiled down to if you lived in the west being a cowboy was the last thing that you would want to do. Most people think that a cowboy fights Indians and he stands up for his self. This was wrong if you were a cowboy you most likely didn't have a gun and you were afraid of Indians. The idea of a American cowboy was displayed in the book “The Virginian” which was later made as a movie and later on into a TV series. The idea of the American cowboy was falsely shown much like the Idea of  the west.

       Growing up in the south in history class we learned about all of the different challenges that the southerns faced after the war. The things I knew about the post civil war before chapter 15 were small details such as: the land in the south was not good because of all of the cotton plantations that we had before and during the war. This cash crop was not good for the land and destroyed the soil, this put a harsh drought to the southern farmers and it prevented them from having a good crops after the war and this was no good for the southern economy. After reading and studying chapter 15 I learned that president  Lincoln was going to be one of the biggest resources of the south because he was going to be good on the southerners and not "punish" them for the war they had caused. When booth shot Lincoln everything changed. Grant was a military leader and he wanted to punish them. He decided that there would be five military districts in the south all ran by a commissioner.

     
      The southerners did not like this one bit and felt controlled. I did not know that the south was under this much of control after the war. As the federal government came down on the south everyone went in debt especially the farmers because if they want to put crops in the ground they need money that they don't have.  I feel that is it important that it is good for the people that line in the south to know about our heritage. If we know about our heritage we know how we got to be where our economy is in the south. We learn about all of the segregation that happened only a few years before we were born- on a large scale- and we now know all of the sacrifices that not just the southerners took but also the African Americans had to take to be free and fight for there voting rights.