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AP U.S. History Diagnostic 12 205 Views
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Description:
AP U.S. History Diagnostic 12. How did the Reconstruction Acts open up political opportunities for former slaves?
Transcript
- 00:00
[ musical flourish ]
- 00:03
And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by Reconstruction,
- 00:07
the nips and tucks needed to restore a nation to its former glory.
- 00:11
All right, first up, the excerpt.
- 00:13
[ mumbles ]
Full Transcript
- 00:16
[ mumbling continues ]
- 00:21
[ further mumbling ] 1867.
- 00:24
All right, and now the question:
- 00:26
How did the Reconstruction Acts
- 00:28
open up political opportunities for former slaves?
- 00:31
And here are your potential answers.
- 00:33
[ buzzing ] [ mumbling ]
- 00:36
[ mumbling continues ] All right.
- 00:39
Well, after Lincoln's assassination, a group of radical Republicans
- 00:42
grabbed the reigns of Reconstruction,
- 00:44
laying in place some pretty,
- 00:46
well, radical ideas about how a country would rebuild itself.
- 00:50
So let's see which answer best describes how the
- 00:52
newly restored Union got its act together.
- 00:55
Did the Reconstruction Acts open up
- 00:57
political opportunities for former slaves
- 01:00
A - by offering former slaves equal representation in Congress?
- 01:05
Hmm.
- 01:07
Well, the 13th Amendment - the one that abolished slavery -
- 01:10
that's what gave former slaves equal representation in Congress,
- 01:14
not the Reconstruction Acts.
- 01:16
And while we're on the subject, the 15th Amendment
- 01:19
granted slaves the right to vote, so that knocks out both A and D.
- 01:23
Could the Reconstruction Acts have opened up
- 01:25
political opportunities for former slaves
- 01:27
B - by requiring states in the South
- 01:30
to write new state constitutions?
- 01:33
Well, the Reconstruction Acts did, in fact, require
- 01:35
Southern states to write new state constitutions,
- 01:38
but this had more of an indirect effect on the political options
- 01:41
of former slaves. So it's not B, either.
- 01:45
That means the Reconstruction Acts
- 01:47
opened up political opportunities for former slaves
- 01:50
C - by requiring Southern states
- 01:53
to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment.
- 01:55
That's right. A major requirement for rejoining the Union
- 01:58
was that Southern states ratify the 14th Amendment,
- 02:01
which gave citizenship, and thus political opportunities,
- 02:05
to former slaves. So the answer is C.
- 02:08
In general, Southern leaders weren't huge fans of the Reconstruction Acts,
- 02:11
but when you lose a war, well, you don't really have much of a choice.
- 02:14
[ fan blows ]
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