Chapter 15: "What Is Freedom?": Reconstruction, 1865-1877

The new state governments under the control of Republicans failed to improve life in the South during Reconstruction.

false (The new state governments successfully established free public education, passed civil rights legislation that prohibited racial discrimination, helped to protect the growing population of sharecroppers, and promoted economic recovery.)

What does it reveal about the impact of emancipation?

-Former slaves occupied and farmed their own plots of land -former slaves no longer lived in communal housing, but had their own quarters -Former slaves built their own churches and schools on the plantation

Identify the provisions of the Radical plan for Reconstruction.

-creation of new state governments -temporary division of the South into military districts, -state guarantees of black men's right to vote, -the Fourteenth Amendment

Identify the groups the Ku Klux Klan targeted.

-white Republicans -teachers -blacks who became landowners -African-American political leaders

Match the descriptions of white Republicans in the South during Reconstruction: carpetbaggers and scalawags

carpetbaggers: -Northern whites relocated to the South after the Civil War. Southern whites believed they had come simply for economic gain. -Their name suggests they packed all of their belongings in a suitcase and left their homes eager to take advantage of opportunities in the South. an insulting term used to describe a northerner who moved to the south after the civil war scalawags: -These were wartime Unionists who cooperated with the Republicans to prevent "rebels" from returning to power. -Southern whites supported the Republican Party and were believed to be traitors to their race by many southern whites.

What does it reveal about the relationships between freed blacks and former slaveowners after emancipation?

-Freed blacks and former slaveowners still interacted frequently after emancipation. -Freed blacks no longer had to show reverence to their former owners

Why did southerners oppose Reconstruction?

-Poor southern whites did not experience the improvement to their economic situation as they had hoped. -Southern whites could not accept the idea of blacks' equality. -Reconstruction governments were corrupt.

Read the excerpt below from A Sharecropping Contract (1866). In what ways does the contract limit the freedom of the laborers?

-The freedmen are contractually obligated to "obey" the landowner -The freedmen are required to compensate the landowner if they miss work for a day

How did the new state constitutions drafted during Radical Reconstruction expand public responsibilities and provide for equal rights?

-They created state-run and funded institutions like orphanages, prisons, and homes for the insane. -They established a state-funded free public education system

How did the Reconstruction amendments change the Constitution?

-They established the federal government as the protector of rights. -They expanded the definition of citizenship to include non-whites.

Identify the components of Andrew Johnson's plan for Presidential Reconstruction.

-abolition of slavery -pardon nearly all white southerners who took an oath of allegiance to the Union -appointment of provisional governors -refusal to pay Confederate debts -repudiation of secession -state conventions to establish new, loyal state governments

Identify the statements that describe sharecropping.

-required farmers to divide the crop with the landowner at the end of the year -preferred by former slaves because it allowed them to work without white supervision -guaranteed planters a stable labor force -a compromise between blacks' desire for landownership and whites' need to discipline their labor force

Identify the factors that contributed to the weakening of northern support for Reconstruction.

-the Supreme Court's failure to fully uphold the rights of blacks -the economic depression of the early 1870s -the growth of Democratic power in Congress -northern journalists' depictions of the failure of southern black leadership