Reconstruction Dbq Research Paper

The Civil War and the period of Reconstruction brought great social, political, and economic changes to American society. The Ku Klux Klan, the black codes, and tenant farming all effected the United States in different ways. The effects of these changes continued into the 20th century.

After the Civil War, Lincoln's main goal was to heal the United States. Our country went through a very long and difficult war for four years. The tension was high between the North and the South now more then ever, and Lincoln wanted to fix our country's problems as soon as possible. There was a group in Congress who wanted citizenship and suffrage (the right the right to vote) for African Americans. they were known as the Radical Republicans. It took a
The only problem, was that African Americans had no jobs. What were they going to do for money? Where were they going to live? African Americans of all ages felt hopeless because they had no one to turn to for help (Document 2). Some African Americans ran for office. One of the most famous African American politicians was Hiram Revels. He was the first African American congressman. Other African Americans opened businesses while the rest were still looking for jobs. Meanwhile, Southern plantation owners have no laborers and laborers had no jobs. As a result, two systems emerged: tenant farming and sharecropping. Under the system of sharecropping, the plantation owner would divide his land into a certain amount of acres. Each piece of land was given to a laborer. The plantation owner would provide the laborer with food, shelter, and all the supplies they needed to work the fields. All the laborer had to do was pay the plantation owner in 50% of their crops. Between 1860 and 1880, tenant farming spread rapidly throughout the South (Document 4). The second system, sharecropping, was similar however the laborer had to rent the land as well as buy all of the supplies, food and shelter. This was a lot of money that not many African Americans