NOTE-TAKING GUIDE: Of the People: A History of the United States CHAPTER 16 “Reconstructing a Nation: 1865–1877”

COMMON THREADS
  • In what ways did emancipation and wartime Reconstruction overlap?
  • When did Reconstruction begin?
  • Did Reconstruction change the South? If so, how? If not, why not?
  • What brought Reconstruction to an end?

OUTLINE
Wartime Reconstruction
Experiments with Free Labor in the Lower Mississippi Valley
Lincoln’s Ten-Percent Plan Versus the Wade-Davis Bill
The Freed People’s Dream of Owning Land
Presidential Reconstruction, 1865–1867
The Political Economy of Contract Labor
Resistance to Presidential Reconstruction
Congress Clashes with the President
American Landscape: Race Riots in Memphis and New Orleans
Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment
Congressional Reconstruction
Origins of the Black Vote
Radical Reconstruction in the South
Achievements and Failures of Radical Government
The Political Economy of Sharecropping
The Retreat from Republican Radicalism
The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson
Republicans Become the Party of Moderation
America and the World: Reconstructing America’s Foreign Policy
Reconstructing the North
The Fifteenth Amendment and Nationwide African American Suffrage
Women and Suffrage
The Rise and Fall of the National Labor Union
The End of Reconstruction
Corruption as a National Problem
Liberal Republicans Revolt
A Depression and a Deal “Redeem” the South
Conclusion
WHO?
Nathaniel Banks
John Dennett
U.S. Grant
Horace Greeley
Oliver Otis Howard
Andrew Johnson
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
William Sylvis / WHAT?
“Liberal” Republicans
Black Codes
Fifteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment
Freedmen’s Bureau
National Labor Union
Redemption
Sharecropping
Ten Percent Plan
Tenure of Office Act
REVIEW QUESTIONS
  1. What made congressional Reconstruction “radical”?
  2. How did conditions for the readmission of states into the Union change over time?
  3. How did Reconstruction change the South?
  4. How did Reconstruction change the North?
  5. What were the major factors that brought Reconstruction to an end?
  6. Compare and contrast Wartime Reconstruction, Presidential Reconstruction, and Congressional Reconstruction. What were the key differences between the three phases?
  7. How critical was the failure of land redistribution for blacks? Was sharecropping an acceptable substitute for achieving economic freedom? Why or why not?
  8. In what ways did the tactics of white supremacists in this period end up hurting their own cause?

NOTES: TO FOLLOW UP / QUESTIONS TO ASK IN CLASS