Chapter 17 Review: "Reconstruction, 1863–1877"

AP* Course Description

  • Reconstruction to 1877
  • Presidential plans: Lincoln and Johnson
  • Radical (congressional) plans

• / Civil rights and the Fourteenth Amendment
• / Military reconstruction
• / Impeachment of Johnson
• / African American suffrage: the Fifteenth Amendment
  • Southern state governments: problems, achievements, weaknesses
  • Compromise of 1877 and the end of Reconstruction
  • New South and the Last West
  • Politics of the New South

• / The Redeemers
• / Whites and African Americans in the New South
• / Jim Crow
  • Southern economy; colonial status of the South

• / Sharecropping
• / Industrial stirrings

Key Words and Terms: Radical Republicans, Woman Suffrage Association, Carpetbaggers, segregation, Ku Klux Klan, United States V. Cruikshank, Depression of 1873, election of 1876, Compromise of 1877, Tenure of Office Act, Military Reconstruction, Freedman’ Bureau, Reconstruction Amendments, Jim Crowe, Black Codes, Tenant Farming and Share cropping, Scalawags, Carpetbaggers

Suggested Pacing

Allow four class periods on a traditional bell schedule of 45-minute periods or two classes on a block schedule of 90-minute periods.

Test Strategy

Chapter 17 lays the foundation for the civil rights movement of the 1960s. You will need to make the connections now and then review these basic ideas when studying the 1960’s

Key Concepts

  • Relate problems of rebuilding and restructuring Southern society
    Use the maps "Reconstruction of the South," "The Barrow Plantation," and "Southern Sharecropping and the Cotton Belt," to help see the location of Reconstruction in relation to the spread of sharecropping throughout the South. What connection does the breakup of the plantation system have to the sharecropping system? In analyzing these concepts, have compare the differences and similarities of the two systems, concentrating especially on who benefited in each case. The long-term result was the increasing dependence of the South on cotton.
  • Election of 1876
    A financial panic set off the longest depression in U.S. history. Prices fell, unemployment rose, businesses closed, and people sank under the weight of their debt. The federal government did not provide relief. Clashes between workers and capitalists led many Americans to question whether the "harmony of interests" that Lincoln and earlier Republicans had believed united the country was indeed intact. When Republicans continued to champion property rights, they became vulnerable at the polls. However, the deal to end Reconstruction put the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in the presidency.

Summing Up Understanding

To compare the Presidential Reconstruction plans to the Radical Republican plan, prepare a chart (similar to the one below) giving the main points of each plan. After completing the chart, explain how Johnson's view of the President's role in Reconstruction conflicted with Congress's view and how this led to Johnson's impeachment.

RECONSTRUCTION PLANS
Lincoln's Plan / Johnson's Plan / Radical Plan