	Instructor Resources
Support student learning and save time with these password-protected materials. To request a password, please complete and submit the request form. After your request has been reviewed and authorized, you will receive a response from our Faculty Services team within 48 hours.
Some content requires software plugins. Visit our Plugin Help Center for help with downloading plugins.

Suggested Lecture or Discussion Topics

Developing The Chapter: Suggested Lecture Or Discussion Topics
Chapter 22: The Ordeal of Reconstruction, 1865-1877

Analyze in more detail the condition of the South at the end of the Civil War, particularly the economic and social revolution caused by the end of slavery. The focus might be on the great difficulty of working out a new system of racial relations, and on blacks efforts to make their own way under harsh conditions.

REFERENCE: Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long (1979).

Compare the mild presidential Reconstruction plans of Lincoln and Johnson with the harsher congressional Reconstruction, perhaps emphasizing how Johnsons blunders and severe treatment of blacks in the South handed the radical Republicans their chance.

REFERENCE: James McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction (1982).

Explain the actual impact of Reconstruction in the South. Particular consideration might be given to the limitations of the Republican governments and the Freedmens Bureau, especially in altering fundamental economic and social conditions.

REFERENCE: Eric Foner, Reconstruction: Americas Unfinished Revolution, 1863 - 1877 (1988).

Examine the impeachment and acquittal of Johnson in relation to the overreaching of the radical Republicans and the declining support for military Reconstruction in the North.

REFERENCES: Michael Les Benedict, Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1973); Hans Trefousse, The Impeachment of a President (1975).