A symbol is a representation of a piece of data. Symbols look like this :my_symbol. If I make a symbol, :my_symbol, and then use that symbol later on in my code, my program will refer to the same area of memory in both cases. This is different from, for example, strings, which take up new areas of memory every time they are used.

Operating on Strings

create strings using the first method

String.new("hello")

"hello".class

Cathy O'Dowd

The closures could last up to six months

POLITICS IN A GILDED AGE

Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)

ShermanAntitrust Act

Civil Service Act of 1883

same rights and opportunities whites enjoyed.They also demanded that the government guarantee them access to land,to provide an economic foundation for their freedom. Most southernwhites believed that blacks should go back to work on the plantations,enjoying very few political and civil rights. Andrew Johnson, who suc-ceeded Lincoln as president, shared their view. But the majority of north-ern Republicans came to believe that the emancipated slaves should enjoythe same legal rights as whites. In 1867, they granted black men in theSouth the right to vote. During Reconstruction, northern Republicansrewrote the laws and Constitution to incorporate the ideal of equal citi-zenship for all Americans, regardless of race. This was a dramatic expan-sion of the meaning of freedom

with the same rights and opportunities whites enjoyed.

The era of Reconstruction that followed the Civil War was a time ofintense political and social conflict, in which the definition of freedomand the question of who was entitled to enjoy it played a central role.

But thegenuine advances achieved during Reconstruction, such as improvedaccess to education, exercise of political rights, and the creation of newblack institutions like independent churches, produced a violent reactionby upholders of white supremacy. During the 1870s, the North retreatedfrom its commitment to equality. In 1877, Reconstruction came to an end.Many of the rights guaranteed to the former slaves were violated in theyears that followed.

Although Reconstruction only lasted from 1865 to 1877, the issuesdebated then forecast many of the controversies that would envelopAmerican society in the decades that followed. The definition ofAmerican citizenship, the power of the federal government and itsrelationship to the states, the future of political democracy in a societymarked by increasing economic inequality—all these were Reconstructionissues, and all reverberated in the Gilded Age and Progressive era thatfollowed.

But just as the American Revolution leftto nineteenth-century Americans the problem of slavery, the Civil Warand Reconstruction left to future generations the challenge of bringinggenuine freedom to the descendants of slavery.

both encouraged and appalled me

It might be possible to save her - or we might yet have to leave her.