ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by apathy,

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the moment you stop caring about Facebook

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and/or Instagram. [ sigh ] Yeah.

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All right, check out this excerpt.

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Negroes were to become lessees of land...

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[ mumbles ]

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[ mumbling continues ]

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Okay, and the question.

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In general, Northerners responded to the

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Black Codes described above...

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how?

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And here are your potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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[ mumbling continues ]

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All right, what exactly were these Black Codes?

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Well, if you look at the excerpt,

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we see the author describes some

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blatantly racist practices.

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Blacks couldn't live anywhere except

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towns and cities,

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they had to make annual contracts

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for their labor in writing,

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and they had to present licenses whenever asked.

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Even though the Civil War was over,

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these Black Codes enforced legal discrimination

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for years to come.

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So let's see if we can figure out how Northerners

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responded to these laws.

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Well, in general, did Northerners respond to the Black Codes A -

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first with ambivalence, but eventually with outrage?

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Hmm. Well, Northerners had just spent four years fighting a

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violent war with the explicit purpose

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of ending slavery.

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So they probably weren't gonna roll over

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and accept these racist laws without a fight.

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So we can nix A and D.

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Could they have reacted

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C - with endorsement for states' rights in the South?

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Well, states' rights were another big issue during the Civil War,

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so Northerners probably wouldn't have just said,

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"Hey, the South can do what it wants.

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Let's just leave them alone."

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That eliminates C, too.

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Which means that Northerners must have responded to the Black Codes

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B - first with indignation, but eventually with apathy.

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After the Civil War ended, Northerners

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padded themselves on the back for a job well done,

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because in their minds, slavery was over.

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The issue had finally been resolved.

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Well, not quite, pals.

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After the war, the South passed these blatantly racist

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policies, and even though so-called radical Republicans

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actively campaigned against the Black Codes,

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they ultimately failed in their efforts

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to reconstruct the South in a fair way.

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So the correct answer is B.

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And looks like Southerners still had trouble with that pesky

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"all men are created equal"

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part of the Constitution. [ sigh ]

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