Making Connections

1. Why and how did the federal government retreat from defending African Americans’ civil rights in the 1870s?

2. Why was distributing plantation land to former slaves such a controversial policy? Why did Congress reject redistribution as a general policy?

3. After emancipation, how did ex-slaves exercise their new freedoms, and how did white Southerners attempt to limit them?

4. How did the identification of the Republican Party with reconstruction policy affect the party’s political fortunes in the 1870s?