Study sheet: Reconstruction and Its Legacy

📋 Course Outline

1. Reconstruction Amendments and Plans
2. Reconstruction Policies and Resistance
3. Segregation and Voting Restrictions
4. Sharecropping and Reconstruction’s End

📖 1. Reconstruction Amendments and Plans

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• 13th Amendment : abolished slavery and forced labor
• 14th Amendment : established that all people born in the United States are citizens
• 15th Amendment : gave African Americans the chance to vote

📝 Essential Points

• John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln and was later trapped by pursuers and killed.

• Andrew Johnson took over as president after Abraham Lincoln.

💡 Memory Hook

13th ends slavery → 14th defines citizenship → 15th expands voting rights

📖 2. Reconstruction Policies and Resistance

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Amnesty : a group pardon
• Impeachment : the bringing of formal charges against a public official

📝 Essential Points

• The Freedmen’s Bureau was established in 1865 and set up schools in the South.

• The Reconstruction Act of 1867 required Southern states to:

  • write a new state constitution
  • ratify the 14th Amendment
  • allow African Americans to vote

💡 Memory Hook

Amnesty pardons a group, whereas impeachment formally charges an official

📖 3. Segregation and Voting Restrictions

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Black Codes : new laws created by Southern states to control African Americans
• Segregation : the enforced separation of races

📝 Essential Points

• Poll taxes and literacy tests were used to prevent African Americans from voting.

• Southern states created segregation after Reconstruction through laws called the Jim Crow laws.

📌 Homer Plessy broke Louisiana’s Separate Car Act, and the court ruled that separate facilities were lawful as long as they were equal.

💡 Memory Hook

Southern restrictions on African Americans → reduced voting rights and enforced separation

📖 4. Sharecropping and Reconstruction’s End

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Sharecropper : a laborer who works land owned by a farmer in exchange for a share of the crop’s value

★ Must-know

• Sharecropping led to a cycle of poverty because sharecroppers owed more than they earned and had to offer landlords a greater percentage of the next year’s crops.

• Rutherford B. Hayes won the election of 1876 because he agreed to end Reconstruction.

Further detail

• Lincoln’s 10% plan required 10% of a state’s population to take a loyalty oath.

• Cotton production in the South was setting new records by 1875.

💡 Memory Hook

Debt exceeds earnings → sharecroppers surrender more future crops → poverty continues

📊 Synthesis Tables

Reconstruction Amendments

Amendment	Main effect
13th Amendment	Abolished slavery and forced labor
14th Amendment	Established citizenship for people born in the United States
15th Amendment	Gave African Americans the chance to vote