Session 3: Reconstruction in Virginia following the Civil War

Virginia Studies
Session 3: Reconstruction in Virginia following the Civil War ___________________________
Materials
· Teacherselected books about Reconstruction in Virginia
· Computer with Internet access
· Examples of Confederate money, if available
Instructional Activities
1. In this session, the students will learn what Virginia was like during Reconstruction and how life in Virginia
was affected during this period following the Civil War.
2. Explain that following the war, Virginia and other former Confederate states had to rebuild.
· The period following the Civil War in which Congress passed laws designed to rebuild the country and
bring the southern states back into the Union was called Reconstruction.
· Many battles had been fought in Virginia, which destroyed plantations, bridges, railroads, and crops. Ask
students what life might have been like for plantation owners, former slaves, and business owners.
· Agriculture had been the basis for Virginias economy. When the plantations were destroyed, Virginias
economy was ruined.
· Millions of freed slaves and others were now on their own and in need of housing, clothing, and jobs. Ask,
What do you think they did to solve their problems?
3. Tell students that during the Civil War, Virginia used Confederate bills as money. Now that the war was over,
this money had no value. If available, share examples of Confederate money with students. (Examples can be
found in Virginia: The History and Culture of a Commonwealth from The Library of Virginia.) Ask the
students what would happen to the banks of Virginia today if money no longer had any value. Help them
conclude that banks in the former Confederate states had to close.
4. Explain that Virginia and other former Confederate states had many problems that needed to be solved.
Congress passed laws designed to rebuild the country and bring the southern states back into the Union.
Congress set up a government agency called the Freedmens Bureau, which would provide food, schools, and
medical care for freed slaves in Virginia and in other states in the south.
5. Use the following Web sites for additional resources on the Freedmens Bureau.
· Freedmans Bureau Records: An Overview.
· Brief Overview.
6. Ask, What skills did most slaves have? Why didnt they know how to read and write? How would this
lack of literacy affect them?
7. Have students recall who did the labor on the plantations in Virginia. Lead them to understand that without
labor to assist with raising the crops and refurbishing farmland, plantations of white farmers were likely to fail.
Ask, How could the freed African Americans, poor white farmers, and the landowners of large farms help
each other? Lead discussion to sharecropping, in which land was rented from a landowner with a promise to
pay with a share of the crop. Sharecropping was a common system in Virginia.
8. Use the following resources for student research.
· Reconstruction and Its Aftermath. .
· Reconstruction: the Second Civil War. .
· A Visual Timeline of Reconstruction. .
· Virginia Center for Digital History on Reconstruction.
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Virginia Studies
· Becoming New Southerners. .