Lincoln was assassinated less than a week after Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House.
Correct Answer
True
True. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865, and Booth shot Lincoln on April 14. Lincoln's death brought Andrew Johnson to the presidency at the start of Reconstruction.
Category: Lincoln's Assassination
Question 2
Radical Republicans in Congress strongly supported Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan.
Correct Answer
False
False. Radical Republicans opposed the plan as too lenient and offering no protection for freed people, and they answered it with the stricter Wade-Davis Bill.
Category: Presidential Reconstruction
Question 3
Andrew Johnson was a Democrat from Tennessee who stayed loyal to the Union when his state seceded.
Correct Answer
True
True. Johnson refused to leave the Senate when Tennessee seceded, and Lincoln chose him as his 1864 running mate to appeal to War Democrats and loyal Southerners.
Category: Presidential Reconstruction
Question 4
President Johnson signed the 1866 bill renewing the Freedmen's Bureau with enthusiasm.
Correct Answer
False
False. Johnson vetoed the 1866 Freedmen's Bureau bill, arguing that the Union was already restored. Congress later extended the bureau over his opposition.
Category: Congress Takes Charge
Question 5
Tennessee was the only former Confederate state to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, and it was readmitted to the Union that year.
Correct Answer
True
True. The other former Confederate states rejected the amendment in 1866 and early 1867, with Johnson's encouragement, which helped push Congress toward military Reconstruction.
Category: Congress Takes Charge
Question 6
Johnson's 1866 speaking tour, known as the Swing Around the Circle, greatly increased his popularity in the North.
Correct Answer
False
False. Hecklers provoked Johnson into angry outbursts, and the tour damaged his reputation. Republicans won large majorities in the 1866 congressional elections.
Category: Congress Takes Charge
Question 7
The Fifteenth Amendment barred governments from denying the vote on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.
Correct Answer
True
True. Ratified in 1870, the amendment protected Black men's right to vote, though it did not extend the vote to women.
Category: Radical Reconstruction
Question 8
The Fifteenth Amendment explicitly banned literacy tests and poll taxes.
Correct Answer
False
False. The amendment said nothing about literacy tests or poll taxes, a compromise to win support, and Southern states later used both to keep Black citizens from voting.
Category: Radical Reconstruction
Question 9
Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi was the second African American to serve in the U.S. Senate.
Correct Answer
True
True. Bruce, who had been born into slavery, followed Hiram Revels and served a full Senate term beginning in 1875.
Category: Black Political Power
Question 10
The Union Leagues in the South worked mainly to keep Black men from voting.
Correct Answer
False
False. Union Leagues enrolled Black voters, campaigned for Republican candidates and helped build schools and churches.
Category: Black Political Power
Question 11
The Ku Klux Klan used violence and intimidation against Black Southerners and their white Republican allies.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Klan whipped, burned out and murdered Black citizens and Republican officeholders to stop them from voting or exercising their rights. Congress responded with the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871.
Category: Collapse of Reconstruction
Question 12
The Colfax massacre of 1873 was carried out by federal troops against Louisiana Democrats.
Correct Answer
False
False. At Colfax, Louisiana, armed white Democrats killed many Black men loyal to the Republican Party, many of them while trying to surrender, after a disputed state election.
Category: Collapse of Reconstruction
Question 13
The Credit Mobilier scandal involved members of Congress who took money or stock linked to a railroad construction company.
Correct Answer
True
True. The company was paid to build the Union Pacific line and made huge profits, and politicians who accepted its money helped block investigation. The scandal became public in 1872 and hurt the Grant administration's reputation.
Category: Grant Era
Question 14
Ulysses S. Grant lost his bid for reelection in 1872.
Correct Answer
False
False. Grant easily won a second term in 1872, though scandals and the depression that began in 1873 weakened Republicans during his second term.
Category: Grant Era
Question 15
Congress created a special electoral commission to settle the disputed returns of the 1876 presidential election.
Correct Answer
True
True. The fifteen-member commission of senators, representatives and Supreme Court justices voted along party lines to award all the disputed electoral votes to Rutherford B. Hayes.
Category: Collapse of Reconstruction
Question 16
The Supreme Court upheld the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and it stayed in force into the twentieth century.
Correct Answer
False
False. In 1883 the Supreme Court struck down the law, ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment did not bar discrimination by private individuals and businesses.
Category: Collapse of Reconstruction
Question 17
Under the crop-lien system, merchants gave farmers credit in exchange for a claim on their future crops.
Correct Answer
True
True. Merchants charged high interest on goods advanced against the coming harvest, and many farmers, Black and white, fell into debt they could never escape.
Category: Southern Economy
Question 18
Radical Republicans wanted to readmit the Southern states quickly with few conditions.
Correct Answer
False
False. Radical Republicans wanted to transform the South and protect the rights of freed people before readmission. Quick readmission on lenient terms was Johnson's approach.
Category: Radical Reconstruction
Question 19
Republican candidates of the late 1860s often waved the bloody shirt, reminding voters that Democrats were tied to secession and the war.
Correct Answer
True
True. Waving the bloody shirt meant reminding Northern voters of the war's sacrifices and blaming Democrats for disunion, a tactic that helped Grant win in 1868.
Category: Radical Reconstruction
Question 20
The Liberal Republicans of 1872 called for expanding federal intervention in the South.
Correct Answer
False
False. Liberal Republicans broke from Grant partly because they wanted to scale back Reconstruction and reduce federal involvement in Southern affairs.
Category: Grant Era