Reconstruction DBQ

Directions:  These questions are based on the accompanying documents. The documents have been edited for the purpose of this exercise. 

In your response you should do the following: 
•	State a relevant thesis that directly addresses all parts of the question. 
•	Support the thesis or a relevant argument with evidence from between 3-6 of the documents. 
•	Incorporate analysis of at least 3 of the documents into your argument. 
•	Focus your analysis of at least 3 documents on how or why the document’s point of view, purpose, historical situation, and or audience is relevant to an argument
•	Support your argument with analysis of historical examples outside the documents. 
•	Connect historical phenomena relevant to your argument to broader events or processes. 

Evaluate to what extent Reconstruction was a failure for the newly emancipated blacks in the period from 1865 to 1877.

Document 1                 	

Source: Walter Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, 1907

Let there be White Leagues formed in every town, village, and hamlet of the South, and let us organize for the great struggle which seems inevitable. If the October elections which are to be held at the North are favorable to radicals, the time will have arrived for us to prepare for the very worst. The radicalism of the Republican Party must be met by the radicalism of white men. We have no war to make against the United States Government, but against the Republican Party our hate must be unquenchable, our war interminable [endless] and merciless. By brute force they are endeavoring to force us into acquiescence [agreement] to their hideous programme. We have submitted long enough, and it is time to meet brute-force with brute-force. Every Southern State should swarm with White Leagues, and we should stand ready to act the moment Grant signs the civil-rights bill. It will not do to wait till radicalism has fettered us to the car of social equality before we make an effort to resist it. The signing of the bill will be a declaration of war against the southern whites. It is our duty to ourselves, it is our duty to our children, it is our duty to the white race…to take the gage of battle the moment it is thrown down. …It is time for use to organize. We have been temporizing [waiting to act] long enough. Let northern radicals understand that military supervision of southern elections and the civil-rights bill mean war; that war means bloodshed….

Document 2                 	

Source: Sharecropping Contract, 1866

…We furthermore bind ourselves that we will obey the orders of said Ross in all things in carrying out and managing said crop for said year and be docked for disobedience. All is responsible for all farming utensils that is on hand or may be placed in care of said Freedmen for the year 1866 to said Ross and are also responsible to said Ross if we carelessly, maliciously maltreat any of his stock for said year to said Ross for damages to be assessed out of our wages for said year…	

Document 3	

Source: Marshall Harvey Twitchell, Carpetbagger from Vermont: The Autobiography of Marshall Harvey Twitchell, 1989

...It was one of the complaints of Southern Democrats that Northern men settled in the South did not identify themselves sufficiently with the interests of the country, many of them unmarried and leasing lands, with no business except politics and governing of the country by the manipulation of the colored vote. I had married a daughter of one of the influential Southern aristocratic families, who all became my friends and supporters. In addition to this, my entire family, with wives and children and all the property which they possessed, had moved South and were engaged in building up the country.

Document 4                 	

Source: Enforcement Act of 1870 (formally, "An Act to enforce the Right of Citizens of the United States to vote in the several States of this Union, and for other Purposes"), 41st Congress, enacted May 31, 1870, effective 1871

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all citizens of the United States who are or shall be otherwise qualified by law to vote at any election by the people in any State, Territory, district, county, city, parish, township, school district, municipality, or other territorial subdivision, shall be entitled and allowed to vote at all such elections, without distinction of race, color, or previous condition of servitude; any constitution, law, custom, usage, or regulation of any State or Territory, or by or under its authority, to the contrary notwithstanding.  ... shall, on conviction thereof, be fined not less than five hundred dollars, or be imprisoned not less than one month and not more than one year, or both, at the discretion of the court. 

Document 5	

Source: Thomas Nast, “Time Works Wonders,” April 9, 1870

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division[ LC-USZ62-108004]	

Document 6                 	

Source: Hon. Robert B. Elliott, South Carolina, speech given to House of Representatives, January 6, 1874

 …The results of war, as seen in reconstruction, have settled forever the political status of my race. The passage of this bill will determine the civil status, not only of the negro, but of any other class of citizens who may feel themselves discriminated against. It will form the cap-stone of that temple of liberty, begun on this continent under discouraging circumstances,…and the highest hopes of those, who in the name of equal, impartial, and universal liberty, laid the foundation stones.

Document 7                 	

Source: Military Reconstruction

© 2016 Cengage Learning®

Unit 3 Test
Answer Section

DOCUMENT BASED

	1.	ANS:	
Sample Strong Response:

Following the end of the Civil War in 1865, the country had to go through a rebuilding and rehealing process known as Reconstruction.  With the North winning the war, the South’s attempt to keep slavery was aborted. The newly emancipated slaves, as well as many northerners, expected the Union to come together quickly and heal the wounds caused by the war. For these freed slaves the Reconstruction period from 1865 to 1877 was a failure for them as their civil rights were not enforced.  

After the war, many Southern plantations were divided into sections for crop planting. These sections were farmed by sharecroppers, tenant farmers, or crop lien, with much of the farming done by the former slaves. To ensure that the work was completed, many blacks signed sharecropper contracts and Black Codes (Document 2).  Each Southern state devised their own code and enforcement of contracts. Even with the Freedman’s Bureau providing education for the blacks, many did not know how to read or write so they were again at the will of the owner of the former plantation as he and the state enforced the signed contracts.  Southern black sharecropping dominated Southern agriculture for the next one hundred years as blacks worked and lived in many cases worse than slaves even though slavery had been abolished with the 13th amendment.

Civil Rights for blacks came with the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution.  Blacks attempted to exercise their civil right of voting, but many Southern whites were opposed to blacks having this right. One of the reasons for the formation of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) (Document 1) was to prevent blacks from voting, through enforcement of poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses. The federal government attempted to halt the KKK by issuing the Enforcement Acts (Document 4). The KKK was officially disbanded but still continued to operate as an underground movement and is still in existence today. Even with the Constitutional amendments, many blacks were kept from the voting booth until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The numerous whites who moved South after the war were known as carpetbaggers (Document 3). They, along with the scalawags, did attempt in many cases to bring aide and assistance to the war-torn South. Many were distrusted because of their strong Republican Party ties. As blacks were voted in as members of Congress at the state and national levels (Document 5), the old South—under the disguise of Jefferson Davis—lurked in the background watching and waiting for a return. Their return came when military Reconstruction ended in 1877 with the election of Rutherford B. Hayes.  The Redeemer or Bourbon white rule returned to rule the ‘solid South’ for the next eighty years. Blacks who had been voted into office were not reelected.  Jim Crowism ruled for the next hundred years.

The Civil Rights Act of 1875, supported so eloquently by Black Congressman Elliott, seemed to be a step toward insuring continued civil rights for blacks (Document 6).  The act was passed as one of the last pieces of Reconstruction legislation but it lacked enforcement as Redeemers gained control of the Southern governments. Black civil rights diminished after the Redeemers took over the government and eventually the Supreme Court ruled against most civil rights legislation that had been enacted during Reconstruction, most notably in the landmark case of Plessy v. Ferguson.

Even with laws and constitutional amendments passed during Reconstruction, once the military left the South and the governments reverted to white rule, most of the advancements in black civil rights stopped.  What had seemed to be a promise of equality and emancipation for the newly freed slaves would take another one hundred years to be completely achieved.

PTS:	1	
OBJ:	ID-5 Analyze the role of economic, political, social, and ethnic factors on the formation of regional identities in what would become the United States from the colonial period through the 19th century.
TOP:	Key Concept 5.3.II | Key Concept 5.3 III		
SKL:	Periodization | Interpretation | Historical Argumentation | Appropriate Use of Relevant Historical Evidence | Contextualization | Synthesis