This lesson has placed the Panic of 1873 at the heart of many developments during the period of Reconstruction. In the following activity, you will review the cause and effect relationships that contributed to the economic growth of the United States and expansion into the West but also increased hardship for many workers, African-American farmers, and Lakota Sioux.
Activity
In this activity, you will complete a flow chart pulling all of these concepts together. Some of the parts of the diagram have been filled in for you. Your job is to select the remaining parts in the right order.
The center row should have one final box at the end of the line—the end of Reconstruction. The economic downturn contributed greatly to the North’s tiring of trying to force the South to treat African Americans equally. The Republican Party started to focus more on improving the economy in order to try and win votes from a public that wanted its government to help the working man instead of freed slaves
The Election of 1876 made this development perfectly clear. The Democratic candidate, Samuel Tilden, received more votes than the Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes. Tilden did not secure enough electoral votes to win the office, and the Compromise of 1877 decided the contest and made Hayes president. The price for Hayes’s victory was the end of Reconstruction.
Where in previous years, the U.S. army was used to suppress Southern resistance to equal rights, President Hayes used the army to end the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and to continue fighting American Indians on the Great Plains.