Reconstruction by the Numbers

Use a passage, a bar graph and an election table to judge what Reconstruction achieved and why it ended.

Answer Key

Read about Reconstruction

A student is making a poster in a university library in Nashville. Read her research notes. Then answer the questions.

Promises and Limits, 1865–1877

1Jubilee Hall, a tall brick building at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, was paid for partly by singing. Fisk opened in 1866 to educate people who had recently been enslaved. When the school ran short of money, a group of its students, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, began touring in 1871, singing spirituals for audiences in the North and later in Europe. The money they raised helped build Jubilee Hall, finished in 1876. Fisk was one of many colleges for Black students founded in these years, along with Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1867.

2Three amendments rewrote the Constitution after the war. The 13th Amendment (1865) ended slavery. The 14th (1868) made everyone born in the United States a citizen and promised every person the equal protection of the laws. The 15th (1870) said that the right to vote could not be denied because of race. Freedpeople used their new rights quickly. They made their marriages legal, searched for relatives who had been sold away, built churches and voted. Between 1870 and 1877, sixteen Black men served in Congress. Southern states, under new governments elected by Black and white voters, set up their first public school systems.

3Many freedpeople hoped above all for land. In January 1865 General William T. Sherman set aside land along the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida for freed families, in plots of up to 40 acres. Later that year President Andrew Johnson ordered most of this land returned to its former owners. Without land of their own, many freed families became sharecroppers: they farmed part of a landowner's fields and paid with a share of the crop, often half. Debts for seed, tools and food kept many sharecroppers poor for years.

4The new rights met violent resistance. The Ku Klux Klan and similar groups threatened and attacked Black voters and their white allies. In 1870 and 1871 Congress passed the Enforcement Acts, and President Ulysses S. Grant used federal troops and courts to break up the Klan. But many Northern voters grew tired of the South's problems, especially after an economic depression began in 1873. In one Southern state after another, white Democrats regained power, sometimes by using threats to keep Black men from the polls.

5The presidential election of 1876 ended in a dispute over 20 electoral votes from Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon. A special commission gave all 20 to the Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes. In an unwritten deal in 1877, Democrats accepted Hayes as President, and the last federal troops left the statehouses of the South. Reconstruction was over.

Which achievement of Reconstruction does the story of Jubilee Hall best illustrate?

A. New colleges opened to educate freedpeople.
B. Black men won lasting voting rights in the North.
C. Sharecropping ended across the South by 1876.
D. Freed families received land of their own to farm.

Draw a line from each situation to the amendment it most directly involves.

A man held in slavery in Mississippi is free in 1866.B
A girl born in Ohio to formerly enslaved parents is a U.S. citizen.A
A Black man in Texas votes in an election in 1870.C

A. 14th Amendment
B. 13th Amendment
C. 15th Amendment

Use paragraph 3. Why did many freed families become sharecroppers?

A. Sherman's order required them to farm for their former owners.
B. Most had no land after Johnson returned it to former owners.
C. The 14th Amendment did not allow freedpeople to buy land.
D. Sharecroppers could keep the whole crop they grew each year.

Sort each detail from the notes by what it is about.

Plots of up to 40 acres on the coastSixteen Black men in CongressMarriages made legal and relatives foundPaying a landowner with half the cropThreats that kept men from the pollsSingers raising money for a college

Land and work	Voting and holding office	Schools and family life
Plots of up to 40 acres on the coast Paying a landowner with half the crop	Sixteen Black men in Congress Threats that kept men from the polls	Marriages made legal and relatives found Singers raising money for a college

Read the data

Use the graph, the table and the notes.

About the graph: These are census estimates, rounded to the nearest 5 percent. In these years the census counted Black Americans together with a small number of other nonwhite people.

By how many percentage points did the share who could not read or write fall from 1870 to 1900? 35 percentage points

Which conclusion does the graph best support?

A. Reading gains stopped when the troops left in 1877.
B. Most could read and write by 1880.
C. More than half could read and write by 1900.
D. The share who could not read was cut in half by 1880.

Which detail from the notes best helps explain the trend in the graph?

A. An economic depression began across the nation in 1873.
B. New Southern governments set up public school systems.
C. President Johnson returned coastal land to its former owners.
D. A commission gave 20 disputed electoral votes to Hayes.

Use the table and paragraph 5. What made the result of the 1876 election uncertain?

The Election of 1876 (185 electoral votes needed to win)
Candidate	Party	Popular vote (about)	Final electoral votes
Samuel Tilden	Democratic	4,288,000	184
Rutherford B. Hayes	Republican	4,034,000	185

A. Hayes won more popular votes but carried fewer states.
B. The House had chosen Hayes before the votes were counted.
C. Tilden refused to appear on the ballot in the South.
D. Without the 20 disputed votes, neither man had 185.

Use the table.

Before the commission gave him the 20 disputed votes, Hayes had 165 electoral votes.

10.

A Black voter in South Carolina hears about the deal of 1877. Why would he most likely be worried?

A. Without federal troops, little stood between him and threats at the polls.
B. The deal repealed the 15th Amendment and his right to vote with it.
C. Hayes had promised to send more troops to the Southern statehouses.
D. The deal said Black men could no longer serve in Congress.

11.

Was Reconstruction more of a success or more of a failure? Make a claim, use at least one piece of evidence from the graph or the table and at least one from the notes, and explain your reasoning.

Reconstruction was a success in some ways but mostly a failure, because many of its gains were not protected. It had real achievements: the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, sixteen Black men in Congress, new colleges such as Fisk, and public schools. The graph shows the share of Black Americans who could not read or write fell from about 80 percent in 1870 to about 45 percent in 1900, so the push for education lasted. But freed families did not get land after Johnson returned it, and many became sharecroppers trapped by debt. The table shows the 1876 election was so close that Hayes won 185 to 184 only after a commission gave him all 20 disputed votes, and in the deal that followed the last federal troops left the South. After that, threats kept many Black men from voting, so the promises of the amendments were not kept. Because the rights it created were not enforced, I think Reconstruction fell short of its goals.