The concept of sharecropping seems frequently to present difficulties for students from non-farming backgrounds. To ascertain student understanding and to emphasize the importance of sharecropping, have students prepare a written statement. Half the students will define sharecropping, and the other half the crop-lien system, in fifty words or so. Start with the first group. Do the students approve of sharecropping? What was the alternative? Add the members of the second group. Was a crop lien necessary to make sharecropping work? Was there an alternative? The instructor will not fail to point out the incidence of sharecropping among whites. Students will then be better able to understand the woes of southern farmers in the 1890s, which they will study later. The text provides a sufficient basis for the exercise, but the instructor may also wish to consult Ronald L. Davis, Good and Faithful Labor: From Slavery to Sharecroppers in the Natchez District, 1860-1890 (1982), and Edward Royce, The Origins of Southern Sharecropping (1993).

Was Reconstruction a success? Or was it a failure? Most students will want to give an on-the-one-hand but on-the-other-hand answer. To set up a class discussion, however, have students choose one or the other and prepare in writing three reasons for their choice. In class the instructor will be ready to offer refutations and alternatives as students are called on to state their views. The instructor will try to structure matters so that he or she will gradually withdraw, encouraging students themselves to carry on the argument. This discussion should serve to deepen students' understanding of the difficulty of the question. In addition to the text, students might read Seth M. Scheiner, editor, Reconstruction: A Tragic Era? (1978). This volume in the American Problems Series might be supplemented with selected chapters from Kenneth M. Stampp and Leon F. Litwack, editors, Reconstruction: An Anthology of Revisionist Writings (1969). See also Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988).

When did Reconstruction end? The "tragic era" school of thought emphasized the length of oppression of the South. Current thinking may lean toward emphasis on Reconstruction's brevity. Part of the problem is defining what Reconstruction was, and the effort to do so can help students understand its nature more clearly. Social, political, military, and economic considerations make for complexity. Have students write a brief answer and discuss it in class.

Another way of understanding the nature of Reconstruction is through counterfactual hypothesis. Other nations have executed leaders of rebellions. Suppose that had happened in the United States. Other nations have seen emancipated slaves turn on their masters in an orgy of destruction. Suppose that had happened in the United States. Other nations have seen instances in which rebel bands, refusing to surrender, have taken to the mountains or the forests in the hope of raising a general revolt. Suppose that had happened extensively in the United States. Make assignments to the students from among the three possibilities. Have them write a brief description of what the South might have looked like at the time of President Hayes's inauguration in 1877. Students will use the text as a basic resource and may also consult John Hope Franklin, Reconstruction After the Civil War (second edition; 1994); Kenneth M. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (1965); and Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long (1979).

Governmental and business corruption is a long and dishonorable tradition in the United States, with Reconstruction representing one of its high (or low) points. For reasons that are not clear, Americans are often offended most by governmental corruption and judge corrupt business activities less harshly. Similarly, but more understandably, today's corruption seems more offensive than yesterday's. Ask several students to collect a few samples of both business and governmental corruption from current magazines and newspapers and a few from the earlier accounts by Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861-1901 (1934) and The Politicos, 1865-1896 (1938), or the more current account by Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Era of Good Stealings (1993). Ask them to report to the class, offering a judgment scale of one to ten for evildoing. The students should, as part of the exercise, define corruption and explain how they arrived at that definition.