The key Goals Objectives of the federal government’s policies
1. What were the key Goals and Objectives of the federal government’s policies and programs for reconstructing the American south (i.e. the old confederacy) after the civil war?
a. List at least THREE goals (and include some description of each).
b. Try to rank those goals in order of priority to the federal government.
c. Was there or was there not—at the federal level (i.e. the government in Washington)—consensus about what these goals should be?
Sample Solution
Reconstruction (1865-1877), the turbulent era following the Civil War, was the effort to reintegrate Southern states from the Confederacy and 4 million newly-freed people into the United States. Under the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866, new southern state legislatures passed restrictive “Black Codes” to control the labor of former enslaved people and other African Americans. Reconstruction was a success in that it restored the United States as a unified nation: by 1877, all of the former Confederate states had drafted new constitutions, acknowledged the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and pledged their loyalty to the U.S. government.
