Question 1

Some northerners wished to provide for a distribution of southern lands to former slaves. Describe that plan and the fate it met. Do you think Reconstruction might have had a chance of succeeding without some form of land redistribution? Why or why not?

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Question 2

The southern governments, as initially reconstituted after the war, alarmed northern public opinion because

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A)  former Confederate leaders were elected to office. 
B)  they were blatantly corrupt and wasteful in spending tax dollars. 
C)  many refused to free their slaves. 
D)  all enacted restrictive legal codes that reinstated slavery.

Question 3

Consider this statement: "The persistence of racism, in both the North and the South, lay at the heart of Reconstruction's failure."Agree or disagree, and explain why.

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Question 4

What were the advantages and disadvantages of sharecropping to black laborers? To white landowners?

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Question 5

Explain why four of the following issues were important to freed people after the Civil War: marriage, family, names, travel, labor contracts, and work done by women and children.

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Question 6

The North interpreted black codes as

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A)  evidence that the South sought to keep freedmen in an economically dependent and legally inferior status. 
B)  evidence that the South, by granting limited rights such as allowing jury service, was slowly accommodating to an improved status for former slaves. 
C)  a realistic solution by the South to the problems created by sudden emancipation. 
D)  a dangerous experiment by the South that could lead to social equality for blacks in the North.

Question 7

The Freedmen's Bureau

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A)  had as its main purpose to prevent armed clashes between former masters and former slaves. 
B)  regulated working conditions for former slaves, primarily through Freedmen's Courts. 
C)  was criticized bitterly by the planter class but consistently praised by former slaves. 
D)  was canceled by Congress over the opposition of Radicals, who saw the need for a permanent welfare agency for African Americans.

Question 8

Explain the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. How was the act of impeachment legal? How was it illegal?

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Question 9

Andrew Johnson narrowly avoided conviction on impeachment charges because

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A)  of his earlier cooperative attitude toward Congress. 
B)  Radical Republicans were beginning to support his policies. 
C)  some Republicans feared that removal would set a bad precedent for using impeachment as a political weapon against the presidency. 
D)  only a minority of the Senate voted to convict.

Question 10

Who won the disputed election of 1876?

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A)  the Republican candidate 
B)  the Southern candidate 
C)  the candidate who received the greatest number of popular votes 
D)  the candidate nominated by a breakaway reform faction of the Republican Party

Question 11

The economic system whereby a farmer rents the land by paying not with cash but with a fraction (often half) of the harvest is known as ________.

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Question 12

For southern whites, the old idea of ________ in master-slave relationships was replaced by ________.

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A)  close paternalistic ties; the distance of purely economic relationships 
B)  religious duty; an ideology of class conflict 
C)  terrorizing blacks into submission; artfully persuading them of the wisdom of letting whites govern for them 
D)  enforced segregation of the races; more complex and subtle social interactions

Question 13

What is true about southern economic redevelopment?

Accepted Answer

A)  Northerners known as "scalawags" came south to exploit the South's economic vulnerability. 
B)  Republican-dominated Reconstruction governments sought to encourage southern industry. 
C)  Unlike the North, southern governments became notorious for corruption, which explains the skyrocketing public debt. 
D)  One success of the postwar South was in laying as much railroad track as the rest of the nation combined.

Question 14

What were the black codes? What role did they play in the early stages of Reconstruction?

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Question 15

The Radical Republicans in Congress approached Reconstruction with the conviction that

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A)  to heal the nation, the South should be treated with generosity and compassion. 
B)  to avoid any recurrence of southern resistance, the power of the planter class should be restored, with full land ownership. 
C)  to complete the task of the war, slavery must be totally and irrevocably abolished. 
D)  to keep faith with the antislavery crusade, the rights of freedmen must include rights for white and black women.

Question 16

________ finally won the 1876 election after an electoral commission awarded him all of the disputed electoral votes from three southern states.

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Question 17

The central issue that divided Johnson and congressional Radicals was

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A)  the future place of African Americans in U.S. society. 
B)  how to win votes for the Republican Party in the South. 
C)  whether the power of the planter class should be broken. 
D)  whether federal troops should be stationed as an occupying force in southern states.

Question 18

Under new president Andrew Johnson, presidential Reconstruction

Accepted Answer

A)  would implement a harsher program on the South than Lincoln had called for. 
B)  adhered substantially to the views of congressional leaders. 
C)  made it possible for former high-ranking Confederates to assume positions of power in the reconstructed southern governments. 
D)  was never implemented, because Congress passed its own program before Johnson's could go into effect.

Question 19

List three major achievements of the radical governments in the South. Which do you think was the most important, and why?

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Question 20

In the years after the Civil War, many freedmen ended up working as

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A)  farmers on land they owned. 
B)  farmers under a sharecropper system. 
C)  wage laborers in the new textile mills. 
D)  itinerant day laborers in domestic and service jobs.

Exam 17: Reconstructing the Union 1865-1877