432 Chapter 15 Reconstruction and the South
Review Questions
1.The introduction to this chapter—which cites the
success of some randomly-chosen figures during
Reconstruction—can be easily dismissed:
Extraordinary people can prevail against any odds.
What gains did most former slaves achieve during
Reconstruction? Which federal policies and actions
promoted their prospects?
2.What strategies did white Southerners use to con-
trol slaves after the Thirteenth Amendment had
ended slavery?
3.Why did the Republicans in Congress disagree
with Lincoln? With Andrew Johnson? In what
sense did the Republican Congress come to
“dominate” the political process?
4.What were the economic consequences of
Reconstruction?
5.How did Reconstruction come to an end?Ku Klux Klan Founded as a social club in 1866 by
a handful of former Confederate soldiers in
Tennessee, it became a vigilante group that used
violence and intimidation to drive African
Americans out of politics. The movement declined
in the late 1870s but resurfaced in the 1920s as a
political organization that opposed all groups—
immigrant, religious, and racial—that challenged
Protestant white hegemony, 423
Radical Republicans A faction within the
Republican party, headed by Thaddeus
Stevens and Benjamin Wade, that insisted on
black suffrage and federal protection of the civil
rights of blacks. After 1867, the Radical
Republicans achieved a working majority in
Congress and passed legislation promoting
Reconstruction, 406
scalawags White southern Republicans—mainly
small landowning farmers and well-off mer-
chants and planters—who cooperated with the
congressionally imposed Reconstruction gov-
ernments set up in the South following the Civil
War, 414
sharecropping A type of agriculture, frequently
practiced in the South during and after
Reconstruction, in which landowners provided
land, tools, housing, and seed to a farmer who
provided his labor; the resulting crop was divided
between them (i.e., shared), 420
Ten Percent Plan A measure drafted by President
Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to readmit states that
had seceded once 10 percent of their prewar vot-
ers swore allegiance to the Union and adopted
state constitutions outlawing slavery, 406
Thirteenth Amendment Passed in 1865, this
amendment declared an end to slavery and
negated the Three-fifths Clause in the
Constitution, thereby increasing the representa-
tion of the southern states in Congress, 407
Wade-Davis bill An 1864 alternative to Lincoln’s
“Ten Percent Plan,” this measure required a major-
ity of voters in a southern state to take a loyalty oath
in order to begin the process of Reconstruction and
guarantee black equality. It also required the repudi-
ation of the Confederate debt. The president exer-
cised a pocket veto, and it never became law, 406