Hook Exercise: Reconstruction
Directions: Below are three groups that played a key role in the Reconstruction period. With a partner read the goals of each group and then read the headlines on the back of this page. Under each headline, note how happy or sad each group would be about the news. Use a scale of 1-10 with 1 being least happy and 10 being the happiest. Be prepared to defend your answers.
Victorious Northern (“Radical”) Republicans (RR)
§ Justify the war by remaking southern society in the image of the North.
§ Inflict political but not physical or economic punishment on Confederate leaders.
§ Continue programs of economic progress begun during the war: high tariffs; railroad subsidies; national banking.
§ Maintain the Republican Party in power.
§ Help the freedpeople make the transition to full freedom by providing them with the tools of citizenship (suffrage -- voting) and equal economic opportunity.
Old Southern Planter Aristocracy (Former Confederates) (SP)
§ Ensure protection from black uprising and prevent excessive freedom for former slaves.
§ Secure amnesty, pardon, and restoration of confiscated lands.
§ Restore traditional plantation-based, market-crop economy with blacks as cheap labor force.
§ Restore traditional political leaders in the states.
§ Restore traditional paternalistic race relations as basis of social order.
Black Freedpeople (F)
§ Establish physical protection from abuse and terror by local whites.
§ Achieve economic independence through land ownership (40 acres and a mule) and equal access to trades.
§ Receive educational opportunity and foster the development of family and cultural bonds.
§ Obtain equal civil rights and protection under the law.
§ Begin political participation through the right to vote.
Headline A: “Congress Passes Enforcement Acts – Troops Sent South to Put Down the Ku Klux Klan”
F: ______
SP: ______
RR: ______
Headline B: “Hiram Revels Elected Senator from Mississippi in 1870 – First Black Man to Enter Congress”
F: ______
SP: ______
RR: ______
Headline C: “Republican Candidate Rutherford B. Hayes Elected President in 1876 – As part of Compromise of 1877, Agrees to Move Federal Soldiers out of Louisiana and South Carolina”
F: ______
SP: ______
RR: ______
Headline D: “Former Slaves Made Citizens!”
F: ______
SP: ______
RR: ______
Headline E: “Ku Klux Klan Holds Secret Rally in Atlanta Warehouse”
F: ______
SP: ______
RR: ______
Headline F: “Price of Seed Increases – Sharecroppers Profits In Decline Again”
F: ______
SP: ______
RR: ______
From information in The DBQ Project – Hook Activity – Reconstruction Mini-Q