Ebook: Chapter 15: "What Is Freedom?": Reconstruction

In the petition to Andrew Johnson, the formerly enslaved Black men indicate that they believe owning land is essential to the enjoyment of freedom. Select the passages that provide evidence to support this statement.

"Land monopoly is injurious to the advancement of the course of freedom, and if government does not make some provision by which we as freedom can obtain a homestead, we have not bettered our condition..."

The sharecropping contract you read is an agreement between a plantation owner and poor laborers, most of them formerly enslaved Blacks. Select the passages of the contract that places limits on the freedoms of the laborers who signed it.

"We furthermore bind ourselves to and with said Ross...account for it to the other hands out of his or her part of the crop..."

Impeachment

Bringing charges against a public official; for example, the House of Representatives can impeach a president for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors" by majority vote, and after the trial the Senate can remove the presidents, Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump, were impeached and tried before Senate, none were convicted.

Fifteenth Amendment

Constitutional amendment ratified in 1870, which prohibited states from discrimination in voting privileges on the basis of race.

Crop Lien

Credit extended by merchants to tenants based on their future crops; under this system, high-interest rates and the uncertainties of farming often led to inescapable debts.

Bargain of 1877

Deal made by a Republican and Democratic special congressional commission to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876; Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who had lost the popular vote, was declared the winner in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from involvement in politics in the South, marking the end of Reconstruction.

Carpetbaggers

Derisive term for northern emigrants who participated in the Republican governments of the Reconstruction South.

Reconstruction Act

1867 law that established temporary military governments in ten Confederate states-except Tennessee-and required that the states ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and permit freedmen to vote.

Tenure of Office Act

1867 law that required the president to obtain Senate approval to remove any official whose appointment had also required Senate approval; President Andrew Johnson's violation of the law by firing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton led to Johnson's impeachment.

Fourteenth Amendment

1868 constitutional amendment that guaranteed rights of citizenship to former slaves, in words similar to those of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

What was a political effect of Radical Reconstruction in the South?

African Americans became increasingly involved in politics, including representation at all levels of state governments. Explanation: The fact that some 2,000 African Americans occupied public offices during Reconstruction represented a major shift in American government.

Civil rights Bill of 1866

Along with the Fourteenth Amendment, legislation that guaranteed the rights of citizenship to former slaves.

How did the Grant administration initially respond to the widespread violence that followed the advent of Republican governments in the South?

It used federal authority, including the army, to restore peace in the South. Explanation: The Enforcement Acts, adopted in 1870 and 1871 , outlawed terrorist societies like the Klux Klan and allowed the president to use the army against them. President Grant took full advantage of these laws in the early 1870s; however, when violence erupted again in the mid-1870s, Grant showed no desire to intervene.

Which of the following describes an effect of Johnson's Reconstruction plan in southern society?

Passage of the southern Black Codes, which allowed the arrest of former slaves who failed to sign yearly labor contracts. Explanation: The conduct of the southern governments elected under Johnson's program-including the passage of the Black Codes-turned most of the Republican North against the president.

Redeemers

Post-Civil War Democratic leaders who supposedly saved the South from Yankee domination and preserved the primarily rural economy.

Which act of Congress created new state governments and provided for Black male suffrage in the South, thus beginning Radical Reconstruction in March 1867

The Reconstruction Act. Explanation: The act-adopted over a presidential veto-temporarily divided the South into five military districts and called for the creation of new state governments, with Black men given the right to vote.

Civil Rights Act of 1875

The last piece of Reconstruction legislation, which outlawed racial discrimination in places of public accommodations such as hotels and theaters. Many parts of the act were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1883.

Sharecropping

Type of farm tenancy that developed after the Civil War in which landless workers-often former slaves-farmed land in exchange for farm supplies and a share of the crop.

Ku Klux Klan

Group organized in Pulaski, Tenneddee, in 1866 to terrorize former slaves who voted and held political offices during Reconstruction; a revived organized in the 1910s and 1920s that stressed white, Anglo-Saxon, fundamentalist Protestants supremacy; revived a third time to fight the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the South.

Which statements best describe the artist's view of Reconstruction?

1. Reconstruction will reunite former enemies under an inclusive new government. 2. Reconstruction will bring voting rights, education, and other liberties to broader sections of society.

What resulted from the presidential election of 1876?

Federal intervention in the local affairs of the South declined, effectively ending Reconstruction. Explanation: In exchange for Democrats' promising to recognize President Hayes's right to the presidency after a disputed election, Hayes agreed to withdraw federal troops from involvement in politics in the South.

Identify one way in which the U.S. South transformed in the wake of the Civil War.

Formerly enslaved Blacks developed new communities with their own churches and school. Explanation: Institutions that had existed before the war were strengthened, expanded, and freed from white supervision. Blacks created churches of their own and flocked to the schools established by northern missionary societies, the Freedmen's Bureau, and groups of ex-slaves.

Which of the following were not part of the vision freedom for African Americans articulated by Black leaders during the January 1865 meeting with Sherman and Stanton?

Freedom from discrimination in public settings. Explanation: This was not specifically part of the agenda Black civic leaders discussed with Sherman and Stanton. In the wake of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, racial discrimination would persist.

Black Codes

Laws passed from 1865 to 1866 in southern states to restrict the rights of former slaves; to nullify the code, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment.

Freedmen's Bureau

Reconstruction agency established in 1865 to protect the legal rights of former slaves and to assist with their education, jobs, health care, and landowning.

Which description best characterized the majority of southern African Americans during Reconstruction?

Remained poor and without property. Explanation The emergence of sharecropping, for example, led to increasingly oppressive economic conditions for formerly enslaved people, who did not own the land they worked and received only a fraction of what they produced.

What describes the Republican free labor vision of a reconstructed South?

Southern Black and northern white workers would enjoy the same opportunities, and the South would become more like the North. Explanation: Republicans hoped the abolition of slavery in the South would lead to a more productive society, with opportunities for both whites and Blacks, energized by northern capital. This vision of reconstruction would not come to fruition.

Scalawags

Southern white Republicans-some former Unionists-who supported Reconstruction governments.

What does the term "Reconstruction" mean?

The rebuilding of the shattered nation in the wake of the Civil War, including new definitions of citizenship. Explanation: Reconstruction refers not only to the physical rebuilding in the wake of wartime destruction but also to the ways that the meaning of American freedom and citizenship was redefined and expanded to include Black Americans.

Which of the following was an accomplishment of the Reconstruction governments in the South?

They generally increased the number of public services and institutions, catering to both Black and white Americans. Explanation: Reconstruction governments rebuilt and expanded public facilities and established the South's first state-supported public schools.

Which statement is true of Liberal Republicans in early 1870s?

They represented the weakening northern support for Reconstruction. Explanation: Though northern Liberal reformers and Democrats opposed Reconstruction for different reasons, both groups sought a new policy toward the South.

Why did Republican leader Carl Schurz call the Reconstruction laws and amendments a "great Constitutional revolution"?

They transformed the Constitution into a vehicle for correcting injustices. Explanation: The amendments were crucial in creating the world's first biracial democracy, in which people only a few years removed from slavery exercised significant political power.

Enforcement Acts

Three laws passed in 1870 and 1871 that tried to eliminate the Ku Klux Klan by outlawing it and other such terrorist societies; the laws allowed the president to deploy the army for that purpose.