Reconstruction Reading Assignment
SSUSH10 The student will identify legal, political, and social dimensions of Reconstruction.
a. Compare and contrast Presidential Reconstruction with Radical Republican Reconstruction.
b. Explain efforts to redistribute land in the South among the former slaves and provide
advanced education (Morehouse College) and describe the role of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
c. Describe the significance of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.
d. Explain Black Codes, the Ku Klux Klan, and other forms of resistance to racial equality during
Reconstruction.
e. Explain the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in relationship to Reconstruction.
f. Analyze how the presidential election of 1876 and the subsequent compromise of 1877
marked the end of Reconstruction.
Define, Identify, Answer
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Describe Abraham Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction.
Who was Andrew Johnson?
Describe Andrew Johnson’s plan for Reconstruction.
Who were the Radical Republicans?
How was the Radical Republican plan for Reconstruction different from the presidential
plans?
6. What was the purpose of the Freedmen’s Bureau?
7. What was sharecropping?
8. How did sharecropping keep former slaves and poor whites in a cycle of debt?
9. Describe the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
10. How did each of the Reconstruction amendments provide citizenship rights to former
slaves? How did the First Reconstruction Act of 1867 affect the South?
11. What were black codes? Give three examples.
12. How did black codes attempt to prevent former slaves from exercising their rights as
citizens?
13. When was the Ku Klux Klan founded? What were its basic goals when it began?
14. What was the Tenure of Office Act?
15. How did President Johnson violate the Tenure of Office Act?
16. Define impeachment.
17. What are the roles of the Supreme Court, U.S. Senate, and House of Representatives in
the impeachment process?
18. What were the results of Andrew Johnson’s impeachment?
19. Who won the election of 1876?
20. Why were the results of 1876 election disputed?
21. What were the major parts of the Compromise of 1877?
22. How did the Compromise of 1877 bring an end to Reconstruction?