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Difficulty: MediumResistance to Reconstruction and its Ultimate Collapse

"The withdrawal of the United States troops from the State House of Louisiana, and the subsequent surrender of that building to the Democratic state authorities, marks the final overthrow of Republican rule in the South... signals the restoration of local self-government and the end of federal intervention in our domestic affairs."
—Adapted from a Louisiana newspaper editorial, April 1877

Which of the following historical developments most directly led to the event described in the excerpt?

  1. A
    The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment by Southern state legislatures
  2. B
    The implementation of President Andrew Johnson's lenient Reconstruction plan
  3. The political compromise that resolved the disputed presidential election of 1876Answer
  4. D
    The outbreak of sectional conflicts over the expansion of slavery into western territories

Answer

The political compromise that resolved the disputed presidential election of 1876
The correct answer is correct because the Compromise of 1877 resolved the disputed 1876 presidential election by awarding electoral votes to Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, which led to the collapse of the remaining Republican state governments.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the date and context of the source.
The excerpt is from April 1877 and describes the withdrawal of federal troops from Louisiana and the return of Democratic control, marking the end of Reconstruction.
Establishing the temporal context helps identify the specific historical event that triggered this shift in federal policy.
2
Identify the political mechanism that ended federal military occupation.
The Compromise of 1877 settled the contested 1876 presidential election by conceding the presidency to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for withdrawing federal troops from the remaining occupied Southern states.
Understanding the terms of the Compromise of 1877 connects the election dispute directly to the physical withdrawal of troops mentioned in the text.
3
Evaluate the options to match this mechanism.
The option describing the political compromise resolving the disputed presidential election of 1876 is the correct match.
This option correctly identifies the root political cause of the troop withdrawal.

Key Concept

The Compromise of 1877 and the end of Reconstruction
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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Topics

Resistance to Reconstruction and its Ultimate Collapse

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