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Reconstruction DBQ
Background: The Civil War had led the United States to tear itself apart. Americans faced
the challenge of putting the country back together again. Politicians and leaders faced many
issues, such as what to do with all the Confederate soldiers, how to readmit the state back
into the union, and what to do with all the newly freed slaves.
Directions: After reading the background, please read the primary and secondary source
quotes below. Then answer the questions that follow.
Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, 1865, on the radical program
for Reconstruction
We hold it to be the duty of the government to inflict condign punishment on the rebel
belligerents, and so weaken their hands that they can never again endanger the Union;
and so reform their municipal institutions as to make them republican in spirit as well as
in name....
We propose to confiscate all the estate of every rebel belligerent whose estate was worth
$l0,000 or whose land exceeded two hundred acres in quantity....By thus forfeiting the
estates of the leading rebels, the Government would have 394,000,000 of acres....Give if
you please forty acres to each adult male freedman. Suppose there are one million of
them. That would require 40,000,000 of acres....
The whole fabric of southern society must be changed....How can republican institutions,
free schools, free churches, free social intercourse exist in a mingled community of
nabobs and serfs; of the owners of twenty thousand acre manors with lordly palaces,
and the occupants of narrow huts inhabited by "low white trash?"....
The property of the rebels shall pay our national debt, and indemnify freedmen and loyal
sufferers.
1.) What was the “Radical Republican” program for reconstructing the union?
First Reconstruction Act, 1867, the radical program
Be it enacted, That said rebel States shall be divided into military districts and made
subject to the military authority of the United States...That it shall be the duty of each
officer...to protect all persons in their rights of persons and property, to suppress
insurrection, disorder, and violence, or cause to be punished, all disturbers of the public
peace and criminals....
2.) What were the goals of the “Radical Republican” program?
Presidential Reconstruction, Digital History: Our Online American History Textbook
After helping to push through the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, the President
sought to quickly restore the rebel states to the Union. He considered Reconstruction a
"restoration" and wanted to quickly readmit the former Confederate states after they had
repudiated their ordinances of secession, accepted the 13th Amendment, repudiated the
Confederate debt, and pledged loyalty to the Union.
Johnson's vision of Reconstruction clashed with that of many Republicans. He vetoed a
string of Republican-backed measures, including an extension of the Freedman's Bureau
and the first Civil Rights bill. He ordered black families evicted from land on which they had
been settled by the U.S. Army. He acquiesced in the Black Codes which southern state
governments enacted to reduce former slaves to the status of dependent plantation
laborers.
3.) What were the goals of “Presidential Reconstruction”?
Robert G. Ingersoll, 1876
Every state that seceded from the United States was a Democratic State....Every man that
shot Union soldiers was a Democrat. Every man that loved slavery better than liberty was
a Democrat. The man that assassinated Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat....Every man
that raised bloodhounds to pursue human beings was a Democrat. Every man that
clutched from shrieking, shuddering, crouching mothers, babes from their breasts, and
sold them into slavery, was a Democrat.
4.) Which plan do you think this man supported (Radical or Presidential
Reconstruction)? Why do you think so?
Mississippi Black Code, 1865
All freedmen...over the age of eighteen years, found on the second Monday in January, 1866,
or thereafter, with no lawful employment or business, or found unlawfully assembling
themselves together, either in the day or night time, and all white persons so assembling
with freedmen...shall be deemed vagrants, and on conviction thereof shall be fined in the
sum of not exceeding in the crease of a freedman...fifty dollars, and a white man two
hundred dollars, and imprisoned at the discretion of the court....
And in case of any freedman...shall fail for five days after the imposition of any fine...for
violation of this act...it shall be ...the duty of the sheriff...to hire out said freedman...to any
person who will, for the shortest period of service, pay said fines....
5.) Why do you think this “code” was created? Do you think the people that made this “code”
supported Radical or Presidential Reconstruction?
Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, Section 1
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the
party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place
subject to their jurisdiction.
Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, Section 1
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens
of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.
Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, Section 1
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the
United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
6.) What were the social and political achievements of these Reconstruction Amendments?
7.) How do you think African Americans felt after Congress passed these amendments?