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About This Drill
AP U.S. History — Period 5 (1844–1877) — Drill 10 is a Multiple Choice practice drill covering Period 5: 1844–1877. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.
This AP U.S. History Period 5 drill uses a modern historian's analysis of Reconstruction. Questions analyze the historian's argument about Reconstruction's failures and achievements, the significance of the Reconstruction Amendments, and broader interpretive frameworks for understanding this period.
Passage
The following is adapted from a modern historian's essay on Reconstruction.
Reconstruction was not one thing but many. It was a constitutional revolution, written into the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments — the most sweeping redefinition of American citizenship since the founding. It was also a social experiment of remarkable ambition: formerly enslaved people built schools, established churches, entered politics, and negotiated labor contracts as free agents for the first time. But Reconstruction was equally a violent counterrevolution. White supremacist organizations terrorized Black voters and officeholders across the South, and the federal government ultimately chose to abandon its commitment to protecting the civil and political rights of Black Southerners. To understand Reconstruction's failure, we must resist the temptation to see it as inevitable. It failed because specific people made specific choices — choices that could have been made differently.
Questions in This Drill
- The historian's argument that Reconstruction 'failed because specific people made specific choices' most directly challenges which of the following historical interpretations?
- The historian's description of Reconstruction as simultaneously 'a constitutional revolution' and 'a violent counterrevolution' primarily serves to
- The 'white supremacist organizations' that the historian describes as terrorizing Black voters most directly refers to
- The federal government's decision to 'abandon its commitment to protecting the civil and political rights of Black Southerners' that the historian references most directly reflects which of the following developments?
- Which of the following most directly occurred in the decades following the end of Reconstruction, consistent with the pattern the historian describes?