STAAR Questions: Reconstruction.

A historian is writing an article for a history website. The article is divided into the following topics below:

Which era in U.S. history is the focus of this article?

• The Jacksonian era.

• The antebellum era.

• The Federalist era.

• The Reconstruction era.

What is the historical significance of this act below?

• It was the first time Congress voted to overrule a presidential veto.
• It represented a shift in federal power after the impeachment of President Johnson.
• It was the first time Congress passed a law that protected racial minorities.
• It represented the failure of northern abolitionists to influence Reconstruction policies.

The election of Hiram Rhodes Revels in 1870 was significant because he was the first African American to?

• win an election as a member of the Democratic Party.
• win a majority of the popular vote in Mississippi.
• serve as a member of the U.S. Senate.
• run for public office in the South.

After the Civil War, southern states adopted Black Codes to?

• punish plantation owners for the use of slavery.
• support Radical Reconstruction objectives in the South.
• promote the activities of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
• imit the impact of the Thirteenth Amendment.

What was one long-term consequence of the sharecropping system?

• Agricultural workers organized labor unions.
• Many former slaves became trapped in a cycle of debt.
• Many agricultural workers moved to cities to start small businesses.
• Landowners sold property to pay wages to former slaves.

This list below describes conditions found in —

• California following the Gold Rush.
• Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812.
• western territories after the U.S.-Mexican War.
• southern states at the beginning of Reconstruction.

Southern states passed the codes described in this excerpt below in order to —

• limit the effects of the Reconstruction Amendments.
• increase the labor supply for factory jobs in the North.
• decrease the number of northern representatives in Congress.
• improve relations with the Democratic Party.

One effect of the Dawes Act was that it?

• caused many American Indian tribes to create written constitutions.
• provided education to American Indians through locally run schools.
• limited the voting rights of American Indians.
• harmed the communal structure of American Indian society.

Which of these prompted Congress to propose the Fourteenth Amendment?

• The popular sovereignty provision in the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
• The positions taken in the Know-Nothing Party platform.
• The Black Codes enacted by southern states after the Civil War.
• The opposition by southern states to the Emancipation Proclamation.

Which of these occurred as a result of the Fifteenth Amendment?

• African American families divided by slavery were reunited. 
• Newly free men and women moved west to claim land.  
• African American men voted in the 1872 presidential election.  
• Newly free men and women were allowed to apply for U.S. citizenship.