CHAPTER 15
“What is Freedom?”: Reconstruction, 1865–1877
TEST BANK
Learning Objectives
1. Identify the visions of freedom the former slaves and slaveholders pursued in the postwar South.
2. Describe the sources, goals, and competing visions for Reconstruction.
3. Describe the social and political effects of Radical Reconstruction in the South.
4. Explain the main factors, in both the North and South, for the overthrow of Reconstruction.
Multiple Choice
1. How did Garrison Frazier define freedom for African-Americans during his January 1865 conversation with
General Sherman and Secretary of War Stanton?
a. having and owning their own land
b. maintaining a state of mind that was untethered from material circumstances
c. working for wages for an employer
d. leaving the United States for Canada
e. renting land on the plantations on which they had been formerly enslaved
2. Which statement is true about “Sherman land”?
a. General Sherman established a wage labor system on the Sea Islands.
b. Sherman set aside lands for settlement of black families on forty-acre plots.
c. President Andrew Johnson supported and expanded the Sherman land reform.
d. The Freedman’s Bureau distributed hundreds of thousands of forty-acre plots of Sherman land in every
southern state.
e. The Sherman lands replaced the sharecropping system.
3. General William T. Sherman’s Special Field Order 15
a. offered black soldiers’ widows survivors’ pensions.
b. allowed emancipated slaves to roam freely across U.S. territory.
c. gave freed slaves the right to settle in New York.
d. set aside land to distribute among black families.
e. conferred honors on the soldiers who had fought beside him.
4. Which of the following best describes the black response to the ending of the Civil War and the coming of
freedom?
a. Sensing the continued hatred of whites toward them, most blacks wished to move back to Africa.
b. Most blacks stayed with their old masters because they were not familiar with any other opportunities.
c. Blacks adopted different ways of testing their freedom, including moving about, seeking kin, and rejecting
older forms of deferential behavior.
d. Desiring better wages, most blacks moved to the northern cities to seek factory work.
e. Most blacks were content working for wages and not owning their own land because they believed that they
had not yet earned that right.
5. What effect did emancipation have on the structure of the black family?
a. Black couples managed to maintain equality within the household because black men tended to enjoy being
able to stay at home.
b. Black families increasingly adopted the nineteenth-century idea that men and women held different
responsibilities.
c. Although gender roles between men and women stayed the same, black men needed to engage in more
intensive labor than ever before.
d. Black families became increasingly matrilineal as black women started to enter the workforce and earn
wages.
e. Black families enjoyed a good, stable quality of life because most black women tended to embrace the
opportunity to enter field labor.
6. Which denominations had the largest followings among blacks after the Civil War?
a. Anglican and Catholic
b. Congregational and Presbyterian
c. Methodist and Baptist
d. Lutheran and Methodist
e. Episcopal and Baptist
7. Howard University is well known as
a. the first medical school to admit women.
b. the first black university in Mississippi.
c. the oldest university in New England.
d. a black university in Washington, D.C.
e. the law school where Abraham Lincoln earned his degree.
8. In which way did the black church change during Reconstruction?
a. It started to play a central role as blacks abandoned white-controlled religious institutions.
b. It no longer played a central role because blacks walked away from religion in large numbers.
c. It became cut off from the African-American community because it was deemed too radical.
d. It stopped playing a fundamental part in blacks’ lives as they started to create more brotherhoods.
e. Its rise coincided with a decreased interest in education on the part of African-Americans.
9. How did Reconstruction leave an enduring legacy?
a. In the twentieth century, former slaves became the majority owners of big plantations.
b. By the turn of the twentieth century, a higher percentage of African–Americans voted than whites.
c. By 1900 in the South, whites were focused on creating harmony between the races.
d. The nation’s first African–American colleges were established.
e. Within fifty years of Reconstruction, a majority of African-American families owned land.
10. What was one of the ways in which black education evolved during Reconstruction?
a. The first black colleges were established.
b. Only white organizations ran black schools.
c. It was mandatory that all black children attend school.
d. Religion and black education were entirely separate by law.
e. Only black schools supported by the federal government were permitted.
11. For most former slaves, freedom first and foremost meant
a. voting rights.
b. landownership.
c. political freedom.
d. education.
e. immediate relocation to the North.
12. Which of the following was true according to Frederick Douglass?
a. The United States should reestablish itself as a monarchical government rather than a democracy.
b. Slavery had been abolished in all ways possible when the Civil War ended.
c. Southern blacks needed to move to the North and create their own separate communities.
d. Slavery was not going to be truly abolished until black men held the ballot.
e. Political participation for blacks was of little importance now that they were free from bondage.
13. Anything less than ________ for African-Americans would betray the Civil War’s meaning, black spokesmen
insisted.
a. new southern railroads
b. full citizenship
c. woman suffrage
d. farming jobs
e. due process
14. In terms of employment, blacks most avidly searched for
a. their old jobs in the plantations.
b. higher wages than whites.
c. factory jobs in the North.
d. the possibility to work their own land.
e. work one could only attain through professional school.
15. How did the Civil War affect planter families?
a. For the first time, some of them had to do physical labor.
b. They lost their slaves but were otherwise unaffected.
c. Few lost loved ones because they were able to avoid military service.
d. They endured immediate problems, but their economic revival was quick.
e. Because they defined freedom broadly, they got along well with their ex-slaves.
16. What was the northern vision for the Reconstruction-era southern economy?
a. to give free blacks the same employment opportunities as northern workers
b. to reduce northern investments in the South and bring all freedmen into northern cities
c. to abolish the Freedmen’s Bureau and ban all migrants
d. to use sharecropping as the main labor system in both the North and the South
e. to help make the South’s economy surpass the North’s in productivity and profit
17. In the Republican free labor vision of a reconstructed South,
a. the southern economy would revive without the need for northern capital or migrants.
b. plantation owners would re-create a labor system as close to slavery as possible.
c. black and white farmers would be tied to plantations through a continuous cycle of debt.
d. Southern black and northern white workers would enjoy the same opportunities, and the South would
become more like the North.
e. the Deep South states would grow wheat and raise cattle instead of cotton.
18. How did southern leaders tend to react to black freedom after the Civil War?
a. They tended to believe it was a right fairly earned.
b. They tended to accept that they could no longer control blacks.
c. They tended to ignore it, as they enjoyed greater wealth than ever before.
d. They tended to view it as a privilege and not a right.
e. They tended to avidly promote racial equality.
19. The Freedmen’s Bureau’s greatest accomplishments were in
a. legal representation and employment.
b. land redistribution and law enforcement.
c. prosecuting Confederates and rebuilding southern infrastructure.
d. education and health care.
e. suffrage and citizenship for African-Americans.
20. Which of the following statements accurately describes the Freedmen’s Bureau?
a. It was overstaffed, especially in the South.
b. It assisted northern societies committed to black education.
c. It lasted as an organization until the New Deal of the 1930s.
d. It focused on distributing land among black families.
e. It presented few new ideas or approaches and focused too much on the past.
21. During Reconstruction, the majority of southern African-Americans
a. remained poor and without property.
b. had the opportunity to purchase land.
c. managed to climb the social scale.
d. felt satisfied with their work.
e. believed the government was fulfilling its promises.
22. What did the ex-slaves see as key to significantly improving their condition?
a. getting paid pages for field work on plantations
b. receiving help from white northerners
c. getting access to higher education
d. leasing land in return for a share of their crops
e. receiving free land as their own property
23. What did Andrew Johnson do with the land of plantation owners seized during the Civil War?
a. He ordered it disbursed among the ex-slaves.
b. He returned it to the original owners.
c. The federal government retained control of most of the land.
d. He suggested that communes be started so that all southerners had access to the land.
e. The first national parks were established on the seized property.
24. According to the petitions that freedmen sent to President Andrew Johnson, what had the government
promised them?
a. voting rights
b. education
c. equality between men and women
d. medicine
e. homesteads
25. Because President Johnson ended land reform and no land distribution took place,
a. most white yeoman farmers were able to become plantation owners.
b. the South industrialized and most African-Americans got jobs in factories.
c. the task system became the dominant labor system in the cotton-producing regions.
d. the vast majority of rural African-Americans remained poor and without property.
e. plantation owners no longer wielded economic and political power.
26. Sharecropping
a. meant that African-Americans were paid a daily wage for doing specific tasks.
b. was a compromise between African–Americans’ desire for discipline and planters’ desire to learn to do
physical labor.
c. was most popular in the old rice plantation areas of South Carolina and Georgia.
d. became more popular because of rising farm prices that brought increased prosperity.
e. was preferred by African-Americans to gang labor, because they were less subject to supervision.
27. The crop-lien system
a. applied only to African-American farmers, as white farmers rarely grew cotton after the war.
b. grew more desirable and attracted more workers as farm prices increased in the 1870s.
c. enabled yeoman farmers to continue to function under the same system as before the Civil War.
d. annoyed bankers and merchants who resented how it made them dependent on farmers.
e. kept many sharecroppers in a state of constant debt and poverty.
28. White farmers in the late nineteenth-century South
a. by and large owned their own land.
b. included many sharecroppers involved in the crop-lien system.
c. refused to grow cotton because it had been a “slave crop.”
d. were all enormously prosperous following the end of the Civil War.
e. saw their debts decrease as crop prices went up from 1870 to 1900.
29. Which of the following statements accurately describes the sharecropping system?
a. Sharecroppers rented land and split the crops with the plantation owner.
b. As the years went on, sharecropping became a less oppressive system.
c. Most sharecropping families prospered and soon owned land of their own.
d. Every census from 1880 to 1940 counted more black than white sharecroppers.
e. A far higher percentage of white than black farmers in the South rented land rather than owned it.
30. Which of the following statements accurately describes white yeoman (small) farmers?
a. Most white yeoman farmers became more self-sufficient after the Civil War.
b. Many who were sharecroppers before the war became landowners after the war.
c. Most white yeoman farmers grew a lot of cotton before the war but very little cotton after the war.
d. Most white yeoman farmers were able to keep their land after the war and avoid cotton farming.
e. After the war, many white yeoman farmers went into debt, lost their farms, and became sharecroppers as a
result.
31. After the Civil War, cotton prices
a. stayed the same.
b. benefited from successful economic policies.
c. fluctuated for a while.
d. rose.
e. dropped.
32. During Reconstruction, southern cities
a. enjoyed newfound prosperity as merchants traded more frequently with the North.
b. were as poverty-stricken as rural southern areas.
c. benefited from the building of a transcontinental railroad from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles.
d. benefited as rice and tobacco production markedly grew.
e. experienced major population losses as blacks trekked north in the Great Migration.
33. Other societies experienced the transition from slavery to freedom around the same time as the United States.
What type of labor did plantation owners in the British Caribbean use to continue their operations?
a. slaves from Haiti
b. indentured servants from India and China
c. freedmen from the U.S. South
d. wage laborers from Brazil
e. servants from England
34. During Reconstruction, what new southern class arose due to the building of new railroads?
a. sharecroppers
b. an urban middle class
c. poor farmers
d. plantation owners
e. political radicals
35. What did the freedmen request in their “Petition of Committee in Behalf of the Freedmen to Andrew Johnson”
in 1865?
a. the right to purchase a homestead
b. an opportunity to attend a black college
c. the purchase of some mules
d. help reuniting their family members that had been sold
e. the right to vote
36. Which statement is true about the “Petition of Committee in Behalf of the Freedmen to Andrew Johnson”?
a. The petitioners demanded land on the grounds that that they had made the lands valuable through their
labor.
b. The petitioners argued that they had a right to the land because they were loyal to the Confederacy during
the Civil War.
c. The petitioners suggested that gaining the right to vote would make up for the land they lost when Johnson
returned the Sherman land to the former owners.
d. The petitioners argued that “land monopoly” would advance the course of freedom.
e. President Johnson agreed to return the petitioners’ lands and resume land reform.
37. What can be determined through analyzing the “Sharecropping Contract”?
a. The ex-slave was given an agreement that mutually benefited both parties.
b. Ex-slaves were not going to be allowed to go to church.
c. The ex-slaves were lazy and unwilling to do farmwork.
d. The contract was a type of economic slavery.
e. This farming system gave African-Americans a good standard of living.
38. What benefit did Abraham Lincoln see in having Andrew Johnson on his ticket?
a. He was an inspiration to working-class people in poverty.
b. As a former slaveholder, he demonstrated that one could live without slaves.
c. He was one of many southern senators from a state that seceded who refused to leave the U.S. Senate.
d. Lincoln’s party hoped to build a Republican base in the South.
e. Tennessee was Lincoln’s favorite southern state because he was born there.
39. What was ironic about the election of Andrew Johnson?
a. He was the first slaveholder to become president.
b. A man from a state that had seceded was now president.
c. An illiterate man was president.
d. A Ku Klux Klan leader ascended to the presidency.
e. Abraham Lincoln now regretted choosing Andrew Johnson as his vice president.
40. Which statement is true in reference to President Andrew Johnson?
a. Johnson grew up in poverty in the South and saw the planter class as a “bloated, corrupted aristocracy.”
b. Johnson was a strong supporter of the Fourteenth Amendment and urged the southern states to ratify it.
c. Johnson was a Radical Republican who worked to achieve social and political equality for African-
Americans.
d. Johnson supported land reform as a means to redistribute the wealth and power of plantation owners.
e. Johnson expanded federal power dramatically to make sure southern states abided by the Civil Rights Act
of 1866.
41. Andrew Johnson
a. simply continued Lincoln’s Reconstruction policies.
b. agreed with Lincoln that some African-Americans should be allowed suffrage rights.
c. won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1868 but narrowly lost the election.
d. lacked Lincoln’s political skills and keen sense of public opinion.
e. displayed a great ability to compromise, very much like Lincoln.
42. How can Andrew Johnson be compared to Abraham Lincoln?
a. Both men faced impeachment charges.
b. The Republicans trusted Lincoln less than they did Johnson.
c. Both men were excellent farmers.
d. Lincoln reached out to the South while Johnson emphasized punishing it.
e. Johnson was more stubborn and less willing to compromise than Lincoln.
43. What did Andrew Johnson focus on with his Reconstruction plan?
a. issuing presidential pardons
b. building railroads in the South
c. securing the individual rights of African-Americans
d. creating a biracial government
e. limiting immigration
44. Why specifically did Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction plan fail?
a. The South had angered the North by almost surpassing its industrial productivity.
b. Black southerners were apathetic to equal rights.
c. Ex-Confederates and pre–Civil War elite returned to power.
d. Blacks refused to work with white politicians in the South.
e. From the beginning, no northerners supported his plan.
45. The southern Black Codes
a. allowed the arrest on vagrancy charges of former slaves who failed to sign yearly labor contracts.
b. allowed former slaves to testify in court against whites and to serve on juries.
c. were some of the first laws adopted as part of Radical Reconstruction in 1867.
d. were denounced by President Johnson and declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
e. pleased northerners because they saw that the rule of law was returning to the South.
46. President Andrew Johnson appointed provisional governors to southern states. How were they supposed to rule
local affairs?
a. by prioritizing black people’s needs
b. by seeking Johnson’s permission to make major decisions
c. by discontinuing state conventions
d. by managing local affairs as they pleased
e. by forming popular assemblies to make all decisions
47. Which of the following statements accurately describes the Radical Republicans?
a. They agreed to support President Andrew Johnson in the upcoming elections.
b. They believed that the states should control all important matters.
c. They accepted the idea that racial inequality was unavoidable for the time being.
d. They tended to represent the ideas of southern plantation owners in Congress.
e. They promoted the ideal of a strong federal government able to protect the rights of all Americans.
48. The Black Codes
a. demonstrated to many Republicans in Congress that President Johnson’s Reconstruction plan was a
success.
b. overturned the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment.
c. violated free labor principles so celebrated by the North at the time.
d. remained a part of southern state laws throughout Radical Reconstruction.
e. were created by the Freedmen’s Bureau.
49. Radical Republicans
a. hoped to institutionalize the principle of equal rights for all, regardless of race.
b. believed it was necessary to reduce federal power in order to establish and protect civil rights.
c. all supported Thaddeus Stevens’s land distribution proposal.
d. voted against the Fourteenth Amendment.
e. opposed the Reconstruction Act.
50. The most ambitious and cherished—but least successful—of Thaddeus Stevens’s aims as a Radical Republican
was
a. land reform.
b. black suffrage.
c. federal protection of civil rights.
d. public education.
e. reunification of the Union.
51. The Civil Rights Bill of 1866
a. was proposed by border-state Democrats.
b. provided African–Americans with the right to vote.
c. defined the rights of American citizens without regard to race.
d. allowed states to determine essential citizenship standards.
e. won the support of President Andrew Johnson.
52. Which of the following statements accurately describes the Civil Rights Bill of 1866?
a. It gave blacks the right to vote.
b. It established basic freedoms that only whites would enjoy.
c. It reinstated the Black Codes.
d. It established education that was compulsory for all children.
e. It promoted equality before the law.
53. Why did Andrew Johnson veto the Civil Rights Bill of 1866?
a. He argued it discriminated against blacks.
b. He argued that blacks did not deserve the right of citizenship.
c. He argued it gave too much power to the states.
d. He argued it was incompatible with the Thirteenth Amendment.
e. He argued it did not follow the appropriate congressional procedure.
54. When Congress sent Andrew Johnson the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, he
a. signed it, creating an irreparable breach between himself and the Republicans.
b. argued that it discriminated against whites.
c. contended that it gave too much authority to the states.
d. won widespread public approval for his response.
e. suggested that it did not go far enough to secure racial equality.
55. In what way was Reconstruction policy a success?
a. It brought suffrage for women.
b. It resulted in land being given to former slaves across the South.
c. It resulted in fair elections by the late 1870s in the South.
d. It established an amendment promising equal protection for all.
e. It industrialized the South on the same level as the North.
56. Which of the following statements is true of the Fourteenth Amendment?
a. It abolished the principle of “birthright citizenship”—citizenship for all persons born in the United States.
b. It allowed states to deprive any person the right to life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
c. It prohibited all states from denying equal protection of the laws to any person.
d. It prevented the federal government from intervening in the states to protect the civil rights of Americans.
e. It guaranteed African-American men the right to vote.
57. The Fourteenth Amendment
a. passed despite the opposition of Charles Sumner.
b. specifically defined suffrage as one of the civil rights to which freedpeople were entitled.
c. represented a compromise between the moderate and conservative positions on race.
d. marked the most important change in the U.S. Constitution since the Bill of Rights.
e. placed into the U.S. Constitution an essential holding of the Dred Scott decision.
58. In March 1867, Congress began Radical Reconstruction by adopting the ________, which created new state
governments and provided for black male suffrage in the South.
a. Fourteenth Amendment
b. Fifteenth Amendment
c. Civil Rights Act of 1867
d. Sumner-Stevens Act
e. Reconstruction Act
59. What early 1868 action by Andrew Johnson sparked his impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives?
a. He fired Secretary of State William Seward, an ally of Radical Republicans.
b. He vetoed a bill to extend the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
c. He bribed a Republican senator to support his Reconstruction policies.
d. He defiantly released a letter showing he had given support to the Confederacy in 1863.
e. He allegedly violated the Tenure of Office Act.
60. When assessing the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, what can be determined about this issue?
a. Both Congress and the president accused the other of unconstitutional acts.
b. Johnson was willing to compromise, but Congress was unwilling to listen.
c. The moderate Republicans hoped in general terms to weaken the office of president.
d. Johnson had little support from white southerners.
e. Johnson survived being removed from office due to overwhelming support from his cabinet.
61. Which of the following statements is true of the Reconstruction Act?
a. It ended the sharecropping system.
b. It established black men’s legal right to vote in the former Confederacy.
c. It banned the use of federal troops for enforcing civil rights laws in the southern states.
d. It ended the period known as “Radical Reconstruction.”
e. It was supported by President Johnson.
62. Why was Andrew Johnson acquitted on charges of impeachment?
a. Johnson’s lawyers assured moderate Republicans that he would behave for the rest of his term, so several
voted to acquit him.
b. No one would testify against him.
c. Leading Radical Republican Benjamin Wade brilliantly managed the president’s defense.
d. Ulysses Grant urged Republicans to acquit Johnson because convicting him might hurt Grant’s chances in
the presidential election.
e. Many feared a constitutional crisis because, without a vice president in office, no one knew who would
succeed Johnson as president.
63. “Waving the bloody shirt” referred to
a. a powerful symbol of Ku Klux Klan violence against African-Americans.
b. a Democratic campaign prop that reminded voters that Republicans had been responsible for the Civil
War.
c. a Republican attempt to associate Democrats with secession and treason.
d. a sign of surrender that southern whites used to signify their loss of power.
e. Andrew Johnson’s use of Abraham Lincoln’s death for political purposes.
64. For the 1868 Democratic presidential ticket, Horatio Seymour and Francis Blair Jr. had a campaign motto of
a. “Liberty, Equality, and the Southern Way.”
b. “Forgive and Heal. White and Black Men Should Work Together.”
c. “Civil Rights for All.”
d. “This Is a White Man’s Country. Let White Men Rule.”
e. “I ‘See More’ Peace and Prosperity Ahead with Real Reconstruction.”
65. The Fifteenth Amendment
a. guaranteed that one could not be denied suffrage based on race.
b. made states responsible for determining all voter qualifications.
c. granted women the right to vote in federal but not state elections.
d. was endorsed by President Andrew Johnson.
e. was drafted by Susan B. Anthony.
66. The Fifteenth Amendment
a. banned governments from denying the right to vote on the basis of race.
b. guaranteed the right to vote for African-American men and women.
c. declared that citizens must own at least 160 acres of land in order to vote.
d. abolished slavery.
e. applied only to the former Confederate states.
67. Republican leader Carl Schurz called the Reconstruction amendments a “great Constitutional revolution”
because
a. they transformed the Constitution into a vehicle for correcting injustices.
b. the Reconstruction amendments significantly restricted the power of the federal government.
c. the Reconstruction amendments allowed each state to decide what rights its residents were entitled to.
d. the Bill of Rights had mainly been concerned with limiting the power of the states.
e. the Bill of Rights was based on the assumption that rights required national power to enforce them.
68. The Reconstruction amendments toppled the ideals of what Supreme Court decision?
a. Gibbons v. Ogden
b. Dred Scott v. Sandford
c. Fletcher v. Peck
d. Marbury v. Madison
e. McCulloch v. Maryland
69. How did the Reconstruction amendments change the role of government?
a. The presidents who immediately followed Lincoln became even more powerful and active than he had been
during the Civil War.
b. The state governments became the only entity that could award citizenship.
c. They set the stage for the federal government to be the protector of individual freedoms.
d. The Supreme Court’s role would be diminished.
e. The states gained protection from an overbearing national government.
70. The authors of the Reconstruction amendments gave the federal government the power to do which of the
following?
a. transfer all authority in terms of citizens’ rights from the nation to the states
b. enforce Americans’ rights and act as the “custodian of freedom”
c. transform the Constitution into a document concerned purely with federal-state relations