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Week 15 · Module overview

Week 15 — Reconstruction

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

Why this matters

A future teacher picturing grandparents and grandchildren learning to read side by side and a pre-law student reading the words that define a citizen both meet this week's question: what do freedom and citizenship mean, and who decides?

In plain language

This week covers Reconstruction (the years from 1865 to 1877, when the country rebuilt the Union after the Civil War and fought over what freedom would mean). About four million freedpeople (people freed from slavery by the war and the 13th Amendment) built families, churches, and schools, voted, and held office. Congress and the states added three Reconstruction amendments (the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution) that ended slavery, defined who is a citizen, and barred racial bars to voting. White Southerners who rejected Black citizenship answered with laws and with terror, and by 1877 the national government had stopped protecting freedpeople. You will read three amendments as dated documents, and then you will read the whole course's roster again to argue one claim about the period.

  • Already covered: Week 6's amendments, Week 12's Dred Scott, and Week 14's Emancipation Proclamation.
  • This week: the two Reconstruction policies, the three amendments, freedpeople's lives, the violence, 1877, and the synthesis.
  • How they connect: the war ended slavery in practice; now the law had to say what freedom meant.

Focus

What did freedom and citizenship mean after slavery, and why did Reconstruction end in 1877?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • [ ] keep the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments apart
  • [ ] tell Presidential from Congressional Reconstruction
  • [ ] argue one claim from three dated documents

To-do

Plan your week

  1. Read Chapter 15 (~70–80 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
  2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes).
  3. Work the practice set (15–25 minutes).
  4. Do the Primary Source Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
  5. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: say what each amendment did: freedom, citizenship, vote.

You've got this

This is the last teaching week. Take it one section at a time, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

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