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Credit Sprint's Guide to U.S. History, Period 5: Sectional Crisis, Civil War and Reconstruction, 1844 to 1877

AP® weight 10–17%CLEP® Both exams

Expansion revived the fight over slavery. A series of compromises failed, the Republican Party rose, Lincoln was elected and the South seceded. After the Union victory, Reconstruction tried to rebuild the South and define freedom, but it ended in compromise and a new system of racial control.

The road to Civil War1820Missouri Com1850Compromise o1854Kansas-Nebra1857Dred Scott1860Lincoln elec1861War beginsA growing divide over slavery in the territories

What you need to know

  • The Compromise of 1850 (including the Fugitive Slave Act), the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) with popular sovereignty, and the Dred Scott decision (1857) deepened the divide. "Bleeding Kansas" and John Brown's raid showed violence.
  • New parties formed: the Free Soil Party and then the Republican Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery. Lincoln's election in 1860 led to the secession of Southern states and the Confederate States of America.
  • Union advantages included industry, railroads and population. The Confederacy hoped for foreign help and fought a defensive war. Key campaigns: Antietam (1862), Gettysburg and Vicksburg (1863), Sherman's march (1864).
  • Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (1863) freed enslaved people in Confederate-held areas and made abolition a war aim. The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery. About 180,000 African Americans served in the Union army.
  • Both governments expanded their powers: conscription, income taxes, paper money and the suspension of habeas corpus. The Homestead Act, Morrill Act and Pacific Railway Act supported the Union economy.
  • Presidential Reconstruction (Lincoln, Johnson) was lenient. Radical Republicans took charge of Congress, passing the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Reconstruction Acts. Johnson was impeached but not removed.
  • The Freedmen's Bureau helped freed people with schools and labor contracts. Sharecropping and Black Codes limited real freedom. The Ku Klux Klan used violence against Black voters and Republicans.
  • Reconstruction ended with the Compromise of 1877 after the disputed 1876 election. Federal troops withdrew from the South, and white Democrats regained control.

Exam traps

Watch forThe Emancipation Proclamation did not free enslaved people in the border states or in areas already under Union control.
Watch forPopular sovereignty meant voters in a territory decide the slavery question. It did not end the dispute and led to violence in Kansas.
Watch forThe Fourteenth Amendment defined citizenship and equal protection. The Fifteenth gave Black men the right to vote. Do not mix them up.

Key terms

  • Compromise of 1850: A set of laws that admitted California as free and passed a tougher Fugitive Slave Act.
  • Fugitive Slave Act: A law that required citizens to help return escaped enslaved people.
  • Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854): A law that allowed popular sovereignty and repealed the Missouri Compromise line.
  • Popular sovereignty: The idea that settlers in a territory decide whether to allow slavery.
  • Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857): A decision that held that Black people could not be citizens and Congress could not ban slavery in territories.
  • Republican Party: A party formed in 1854 to oppose the expansion of slavery.
  • Bleeding Kansas: Violence between pro- and anti-slavery settlers in Kansas.
  • John Brown's raid: A failed 1859 attack on Harpers Ferry meant to spark a slave uprising.
  • Secession: The withdrawal of Southern states from the Union after Lincoln's election.
  • Fort Sumter: The South Carolina fort where the Civil War began in April 1861.
  • Antietam: The bloodiest single day of the war, a Union success that allowed Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
  • Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln's 1863 order that freed enslaved people in areas controlled by the Confederacy.
  • Gettysburg: A 1863 Union victory in Pennsylvania, the turning point in the East.
  • Vicksburg: A 1863 Union victory that gave the North control of the Mississippi.
  • Habeas corpus: The right to be brought before a court; Lincoln suspended it during the war.
  • Homestead Act (1862): A law that gave settlers 160 acres of western land.

Practice questions

Five of the 54 Period 5 questions in Credit Sprint. Every choice is explained in the app.

1. The idea of Manifest Destiny held that
  1. Native Americans would gladly share their lands with new settlers moving west
  2. the United States was fated to expand across the continent
  3. the United States had a duty to stay out of North American disputes with Britain and Mexico
  4. the nation should stay within its original thirteen states to keep its values
Show answer

the United States was fated to expand across the continent. Supporters used the phrase in the 1840s to justify annexing Texas, claiming Oregon and taking land from Mexico, often citing the spread of democracy and Protestant civilization.

2. The Republican Party formed in the 1850s mainly to
  1. defend the Fugitive Slave Act as the law of the land
  2. abolish slavery immediately in every Southern state
  3. stop the expansion of slavery into the western territories
  4. protect states' rights and Southern interests above all else
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stop the expansion of slavery into the western territories. It united Free-Soil Democrats, antislavery Whigs and Northern reformers who rejected the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

3. The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) declared free the enslaved people
  1. only those who enlisted in the Confederate army
  2. in the border states loyal to the Union
  3. in Confederate-held areas still in rebellion
  4. in every state and territory of the United States
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in Confederate-held areas still in rebellion. It did not free those in the border states, and it turned the war into a fight against slavery while allowing Black men to join the Union army.

4. Sharecropping in the postwar South usually meant that
  1. freedpeople worked in factories for steady wages in Southern towns
  2. Northern investors bought Southern plantations and farmed them with machines
  3. freedpeople farmed land owned by others and paid with a share of the crop
  4. the government gave every freedperson forty acres and a mule
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freedpeople farmed land owned by others and paid with a share of the crop. Cash-poor planters and landless freedpeople turned to the system, but debts and unfair contracts often trapped families in poverty.

5. The Radical Republicans in Congress wanted Reconstruction to
  1. pay compensation to former slaveholders
  2. guarantee civil rights and political power to freed African Americans
  3. restore the antebellum Southern order as quickly as possible
  4. end all federal involvement in the South at once
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guarantee civil rights and political power to freed African Americans. They rejected Andrew Johnson's lenient plan, and pushed the Reconstruction Acts and the Fourteenth Amendment over his vetoes.