Document 14.1 COLORED PEOPLE’S CONVENTION OF SOUTH CAROLINA, Memorial to Congress (1865)
Document 14.2 LOTTIE ROLLIN, Address on Universal Suffrage (1870)
Document 14.3 ROBERT BROWN ELLIOTT, In Defense of the Civil Rights Bill (1874)
Document 14.4 JAMES SHEPHERD PIKE, The Prostrate State (1874)
Document 14.5 ULYSSES S. GRANT, Letter to South Carolina Governor D. H. Chamberlain (1876)
Essay Questions for Thinking through Sources 14
Identify African American Perspectives: What do these documents reveal about what African Americans hoped Reconstruction would accomplish for them as a group? What rights and privileges did they hope to gain? What obstacles did they identify? What kinds of arguments did they use to justify their demands?
Identify Opposition to Reconstruction: What do these documents reveal about the individuals and groups that opposed the goals of Reconstruction? What arguments did opponents make against African American and radical Republican proposals and policies? How much influence did they have?
Consider Change over Time: What do these documents reveal about how public discussion about and support for Reconstruction changed between 1865 and 1876? What do they suggest about why such change occurred? What other individual perspectives or types of documents might make it possible to answer such questions more definitively?
Consider Outcome: What do the documents suggest about the extent to which Reconstruction policies in the former Confederacy created lasting change and the extent to which they failed? What do they tell us about why they failed? Based on your reading of these documents, do you think the failures of Reconstruction were inevitable? What factors might have resulted in a different outcome?
Thinking through Sources forExploring American Histories, Volume 1, Volume 2Printed Page 113