Unit 1 US History Reconstruction Test

"It seemed...as if I had been away only a day or two and had just taken up...where I had left off." —Union solider, on returning home at the end of the Civil War What contributed to the experience described by this soldier?

Most of the war had taken place in the South

Reread the following passage from the text about the Fourteenth Amendment: Under the Fourteenth Amendment, any state that denied any male citizen age 21 or older the right to vote would have its representation in Congress reduced. Republicans believed that freedmen would be able to defend their rights if they could vote. Republicans hoped the impact of the amendment on life in the United States would be to secure basic political rights for African Americans in the South. That goal would take a century to achieve. What would happen if a state refused to comply with the Fourteenth Amendment?

The state would have less political power

Why did Republicans in Congress attempt to impeach President Andrew Johnson?

They disagreed over plans for Reconstruction

Which shared problem caused by the sharecropping system best completes the diagram?

a cycle of debt

Which of the following most likely describes the perspective of the person who made this illustration?

a supporter of Radical Reconstruction

Based on the graph, which industry's decline would hurt the southern economy the most?

agriculture

In which of the following areas did Reconstruction have the most positive effect?

education

Reread the following passage from the text: Radical Republicans had two main goals. First, they wanted to break the power of wealthy planters who had long ruled the South. Second, they wanted to ensure that freedmen received the right to vote. They used legislative reforms, or changes in laws, to achieve their goals. Which of the following is an example of how Radical Republicans sought to achieve their goals?

ensuring that African Americans could outvote their former owners

Read the following excerpt: Even after the Emancipation Proclamation, two more years of war, service by African American troops, and the defeat of the Confederacy, the nation was still unprepared to deal with the question of full citizenship for its newly freed black population. The Reconstruction implemented [put into use] by Congress, which lasted from 1866 to 1877, was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War, providing the means for readmitting them into the Union, and defining the means by which whites and blacks could live together in a nonslave society. The South, however, saw Reconstruction as a humiliating, even vengeful imposition [annoyance] and did not welcome it. During the years after the war, black and white teachers from the North and South, missionary organizations, churches and schools worked tirelessly to give the emancipated population the opportunity to learn. Former slaves of every age took advantage of the opportunity to become literate. Grandfathers and their grandchildren sat together in classrooms seeking to obtain the tools of freedom. According to the text, many southerners disagreed with Reconstruction because it...

gave Congress too much control over southern states

After the war, transportation in the South suffered most because...

most of the railroad tracks in the South had been destroyed

Why did the southern states adopt literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses?

to keep African Americans from voting

Which of the following phrases might a Republican congressman have used to describe President Johnson's Reconstruction plans?

too lenient

What pattern can you find in sharecropping as shown on this map?

In Georgia and South Carolina, sharecropping was more common in inland areas than coastal areas

According to Justice Harlan in the following excerpt, how does the legal system view discrimination according to the Constitution? But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. —Justice John Harlan, dissenting opinion, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

It insists that all citizens are equal before the law

Which of the following conclusions about the Freedman's Bureau is best supported by the illustration?

It provided education to people of all ages

This 1956 photograph illustrates the lasting effects of...

Jim Crow Laws

According to the following excerpt, What happened after the Fifteenth Amendment was passed? It was the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, which finally gave African Americans the right to vote. It states that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. In practice, however, it took almost 100 more years and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to remove barriers such as poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation that prevented African Americans and other people of color from freely exercising their right to vote. Note that the 15th Amendment makes no mention of sex. It was not until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 that women were explicitly given the vote.

New methods were found to prevent African Americans from voting

Reread the following passage from the text: When the war ended and southern farmers returned to the market, they faced much greater competition from foreign producers, resulting in lower prices according to the laws of supply and demand. Meanwhile, the war had destroyed many of the South's cities and factories. Southern planters had lost their enslaved workers, who were often planters' main investment. The South had little money to invest in industry. As a result, it remained dependent on farming at a time when farming brought less income. Why was southern agriculture less profitable after the Civil War?

Other countries were growing the same crops by then

This image of the South Carolina legislature illustrates the impact of the...

Reconstruction Acts

Reread the following paragraph from the text about the Fourteenth Amendment: Republicans feared that the Supreme Court might use its power of judicial review to declare the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional. In the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Court had ruled that African Americans were not citizens. To avoid a similar ruling, Republicans proposed the Fourteenth Amendment. It defined citizens as "all persons born or naturalized in the United States." (The amendment did not apply to most Native Americans.) It guaranteed citizens "equal protection of the laws" and forbade states to "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law." Thus, states could not legally discriminate against a citizen on unreasonable grounds, such as race. The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed in 1866. According to this passage, how did the Dred Scott decision help inspire the Fourteenth Amendment?

The Dred Scott decision declared that African Americans were not citizens, so the amendment defined citizenship to include them