Voting Rights in the Reconstruction Era

The Reconstruction Era (1863-1876) witnessed rapid changes in voting rights. While Congress passed legislation to give African American males the right to vote, Congress denied the vote to women and, temporarily, many former Confederates. Yet, members of Congress did not have the final say on voting rights. Depending on where an individual lived, the color of his skin, his party loyalties, and whether or not federal troops were stationed nearby, he could be denied the vote through intimidation and fraud. These conflicts over voting rights and voting fraud came to a head during the disputed 1876 presidential election. The compromise decision that settled the election ended political Reconstruction and shaped voting rights in America for over eighty years. 

Weblink address (URL): 
Voting Rights in the Reconstruction Era
Home Page for the Lesson Plan- Source

Standards & Objectives

Learning objectives: 

Students will learn how to use a timeline, interpret and examine primary sources, such as newspaper articles, and build critical thinking skills.

Essential and guiding questions: 

What factor(s) determined whether an individual could vote in Reconstruction America?

Lesson Variations

Blooms taxonomy level: 
Applying
Extension suggestions: 
  • Activity 1: A Day in the Life Have your students write a one-page response to the following prompt. The prompt should be written as if it were an actual letter: Imagine that you are a freed slave living in South Carolina. You are getting ready to vote in the presidential election of 1876. Whom would you vote for? Why? What problems might you face when you go to the polls? What candidate(s) might your black neighbors vote for? What about your white neighbors? You decide to write about your reflections in a letter to your cousin, Robert, in New England. Your cousin bought his freedom a decade before the Civil War, moved to New England, and has been voting since 1850. What are your opinions of your cousin’s voting rights?
  • Activity 2: “Can I see Your ID?”—Voting Fraud Today? Voting fraud is not a relic of Reconstruction. Voting laws would be revised, reformed, ignored, and circumvented up into the twenty-first century. Several instances of Reconstruction Era, “Jim Crow,” voting fraud persisted until the 1960s, until the federal government stepped up to monitor the polls and pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Even today, voting fraud is a major issue in American politics. Have your students look at some of the following articles, all published within the past three years: the PBS article, “Why Voter ID Laws Aren't Really About Fraud,” CBS’s “Supreme Court weighs in on controversial voter ID law,” the Atlantic’s “How Voter ID Laws Are Being Used to Disenfranchise Minorities and the Poor,” and Fox News’ “Hundreds of cases of potential voter fraud uncovered in North Carolina.” Ask your students if they have heard anything about voting fraud. Do they believe there is voting fraud going on today? Is fraud today anything like the voting fraud of the Reconstruction Era?

Helpful Hints

LESSON MATERIALS:

  • Who Gets to Vote? Worksheet
  • 14th Amendment Worksheet
  • Article 1(Pickens Sentinel)
  • Article 2 (Indiana State Sentinel)
  • Article 3 (Highland Weekly News)
  • Article 4 (Belmont Chronicle)
  • Encyclopedia of the Reconstruction Era (see page
  • 50 for a Reconstruction timeline; for voting rights info, see amnesty proclamations, black suffrage, civil rights, congressional reconstruction, disenfranchisement, Military Reconstruction Acts, and presidential reconstruction)
  • Library of Congress: Teacher’s Guides and Analysis Tool