Making Connections

1. Question

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

2. Question

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

3. Question

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

4. Question

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