Popular imagination has a distorted view of the American cowboy. Cowboys are normally viewed as men who freely chose to stray from organized society, who were heroic, who used violence only in the name of justice, who were charming, courageous, and decent, and who were one with nature. In fact, however, cowboys were low paid workers at the bottom of the social ladder. They have been free from Eastern American society and free to roam throughout nature, but they were still bound by their work and lower social class.

Not only does popular imagination have a distorted view of the American cowboy, it also has a distorted view of the "Wild West," altogether, sprouting from its misconceptions of the cowboy. A cowboy free to roam wherever he wants in the arid deserts of the West paints a picture of uninhabited, non-diverse land ready for exploration by Easterners. A cowboy who is respected by townspeople for putting Indians in there place paints the picture of war only between Easterners come West with Indians. A cowboy who is obsessed over across generations paints the picture of a singular Western culture, centered around the cowboy. None of these pictures, however, are real. In truth, the West was a region of diverse terrain; the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains, the Redwood Forests, and the Mojave Desert offer huge ecologic diversity. Before Easterners came to the West, the land was indeed already inhabited by Indians, Spaniards, and Mexicans, many of whom had established permanent settlements. While Indians did fight with Anglo-Americans, many tensions lay within the Indian tribes themselves, and the cowboy was not the one to go fighting when the time came either; the U.S. Army fought the wars. No Western society was cowboy-centric; rather Mexican/Spanish settlements revolved around ranching and Indian tribes revolved around either farming (as is the case with the Pueblo Indians) or buffalo hunting (as is the case with the Plains Indians).

How could popular imagination be so blatantly wrong? Some stretching of facts is acceptable, but the view shared by most is almost completely fictional. The leading factor contributing to this obscuration of facts is mainly the popular works of fiction created at the time of migration to the West, contemporary with the American cowboy. Literature by Twain and Wister, paintings by Remington and Moran, even accounts from Teddy Roosevelt portray the West in its idealized form; an empty frontier offering freedom. Because of this popularization, many other aspects of the West have been forgotten, such as the former authority of Mexican ranchers, the initial success of Chinese immigrants turned sour by discrimination, the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, and the transformation of states into territories even at times as a result of women suffrage.

Before learning about the Post-Civil War South, I only knew that Lincoln was assassinated, the states somehow reunited, and slaves were freed.

After formally (re)learning more of the specifics of Reconstruction, what most stands out to me includes the following:
- The 13th amendment abolished slavery
- The 14th amendment defined citizenship
- The 15th amendment granted suffrage to all citizens
- The 17th president was Andrew Johnson, who was disliked and even impeached for violating the Tenure of Office Act
- The 18th president was Ulysses S. Grant, whose presidency was full of corruption because of stock deals with a railroad company and whiskey rings
- The 19th president was Rutherford B. Hayes, who gained office (over Samuel Tilden) only because Southern democratic leaders made a deal the Republicans. The deal basically exchanged Hayes' win for removal of Federal troops from the South
- The Crop-lien system was similar to sharecropping, but was facilitated by country stores which eventually gained a monopoly over supplies in the South. Inflated prices contributed to the debt brought on by the crop-lien system where farmers would pay with future, not-yet-harvested crops.
- Segregation went into the 1960s; not very far from present day. It is now easier to see why black culture is still very distinctive. The characteristics of this culture were formed during Reconstruction, when blacks segregated themselves from white culture and their past lives as slaves by developing autonomous communities complete with their own schools and churches. This autonomy coupled with the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments define the black view of freedom.
- The KKK may still live on today (although it is more pro-white rather than anti-black supposedly), but Congress did put laws in place to deter the Klan from persecuting black citizens, including the Enforcement Acts.
- Other laws, however, were made in the South to skirt around the new amendments and maintain white supremacy, the picture of freedom for the average white southerner. These laws were the Jim Crow Laws.
- The Jim Crow laws have their origins in the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court Case, where segregation was ruled legal if accommodations for both races were equal.
-These laws were enforced legally, of course, but illegally as well through lynching. Lynching became something many white southerners looked forward to, even celebrated. It not a private happening either; local authorities and families came to lynching events.
- There was an anti-lynching movement, but it was fairly unsuccessful. Ida B. Wells, a female black journalist, was instrumental in this movement. Her success despite the times is astounding.

It is important for people to know and understand the history of the place in which they live so that 1) They do not make the same, or similar, mistakes, and 2) They understand why the economies, social structures, and infrastructures of the place in which they live are the way they are.

As a Southerner, I now know from where many persisting social stigmas come: black stereotypes, farmer stereotypes, and antebellum/white southerner/rebel pride stereotypes. To me, tracing this sociology is one of the most interesting parts of studying history.