Reconstruction Crossword Puzzle

Print a criss-cross vocabulary crossword on Reconstruction: the amendments, the Freedmen's Bureau, sharecropping and the Compromise of 1877.

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Reconstruction Crossword

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Answer key: Reconstruction Crossword

1RATI2FY3CRO4BE5BNU6CARPETBAGGERIDLRETOLEAI7VMOSUZE8STSETU9UNIONFSF10SHARECROPPERIAPG11AMENDMENT

Across 1 RATIFY · 6 CARPETBAGGER · 9 UNION · 10 SHARECROPPER · 11 AMENDMENT

Down 2 FREEDOM · 3 CONGRESS · 4 BUREAU · 5 BALLOT · 6 CITIZENSHIP · 7 VETO · 8 SUFFRAGE

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Plans to Rebuild the Union 21

  • Amnesty Blanket forgiveness, offered in 1863 to those who would swear allegiance again
  • Confederacy Short name for the Southern government that fell in 1865
  • Congress Capitol Hill's two chambers; author of the 1867 Acts
  • Convention Gathering that wrote a new charter for a state
  • District One of the army-run zones into which ten Southern states were grouped in 1867
  • General Rank of the officer placed over each of the zones of 1867
  • Georgia The final breakaway state to be let back in
  • Majority More than half: what the stricter bill of 1864 demanded in place of a tenth
  • Oath "Ironclad" was one kind: a sworn statement of past and future allegiance
  • Override To pass a law anyway, over the objection of the White House
  • Pardon Official forgiveness; President Johnson issued many to former rebels
  • Percent Ten ___: the share of a state's 1860 voters whose pledge Lincoln's plan required
  • Proclamation Lincoln signed a famous one on New Year's Day of 1863
  • Radical Nickname of the lawmakers who demanded the most for freed people
  • Readmit To let back in to the nation's councils
  • Rebuild To raise a burned bridge a second time
  • Secede To quit the nation, as South Carolina was first to do in December 1860
  • Tennessee First of the breakaway states let back in, in July 1866
  • Twelve Years these events are usually said to have lasted, 1865 to 1877
  • Union What the North fought to preserve: the nation as one
  • Veto The president's "no"; lawmakers beat one in April 1866

Amendments and Rights 20

  • Abolish To end by law, for good
  • Amendment Article joined to a founding charter; this era brought three
  • Ballot Voter's marked and folded paper
  • Citizenship What the 1868 change gave to all born on American soil
  • Civil ___ Rights Act of 1866: passed over a presidential refusal
  • Enforcement ___ Acts of 1870 and 1871: laws meant to protect voters
  • Equality Sameness of rights and treatment
  • Fifteenth Ordinal of the constitutional change of 1870, on voting
  • Fourteenth Ordinal of the constitutional change adopted on July 9, 1868
  • Jury Its members weigh the evidence in court; an 1875 law opened service on it to all
  • Justice What a fair court is meant to deliver
  • Process "Due ___ of law": what no state may deny a person
  • Protection "Equal ___ of the laws": a promise made to every person in 1868
  • Race One of three grounds named in the 1870 voting change, with color and past bondage
  • Ratify To say a formal yes to an addition to the founding charter
  • Senate It welcomed its first Black member, a minister, in these years
  • Servitude "Involuntary ___": forced labor, banned in 1865 except as punishment for a crime
  • Slavery The owning of human beings, outlawed nationwide in December 1865
  • Suffrage Another word for the franchise
  • Thirteenth Ordinal of the article that took force on December 6, 1865, ending bondage

Freed People and New Beginnings 18

  • Abandoned Left behind, like the lands the relief agency of 1865 managed
  • Bureau The Freedmen's ___ of 1865 fed and taught the freed
  • College Many for Black students were founded in these years
  • Contract Paper that set a year's pay and duties, signed by planter and field hand
  • Emancipation Release from bondage; Lincoln's famous order of 1863 is named for it
  • Exoduster One of the Black families who left the South for the plains in 1879
  • Forty "___ acres and a mule": the land many freed families hoped for
  • Freedom Liberty; what the war's end brought to the enslaved
  • Homestead Southern ___ Act of 1866: it sold public land at low prices
  • Kansas State that drew thousands of Black settlers in 1879
  • Marriage Freed couples could at last make theirs legal
  • Rations Food handed out by a relief agency
  • Refugee Person uprooted by war; the relief agency of 1865 served them too
  • Reunite What parents and children parted by sale longed to do
  • Savings Freedman's ___ Bank: chartered in 1865, it failed in 1874
  • School Freed people of every age filled its benches to study reading
  • Teacher Many came from the North to work in the new classrooms
  • Wages Pay for work, something new for people once held in bondage

Land and Labor 15

  • Cotton King of Southern cash crops, picked from bolls
  • Credit Buying supplies now, to be paid for after the harvest
  • Debt Money owed; it kept many farm families tied to one place year after year
  • Landowner Person to whom a renter owes payment
  • Lien Crop ___: a storekeeper's hold on a harvest not yet grown
  • Merchant Storekeeper who sold goods against the coming crop
  • Panic ___ of 1873: the run of bank failures that began a long slump
  • Plantation Large estate, often split into small rented plots after the war
  • Poverty Having too little to live on, year after year
  • Railroad The war left little of it running in the South
  • Ruins What the war left of Southern rail lines and bridges
  • Seed What a farmer puts in the ground in spring
  • Sharecropper Farmer who paid for the land with part of the crop
  • Taxes Property ___ climbed steeply in these years as states ran short of funds
  • Tenant Farmer who rents the fields he works

Backlash and the End 22

  • Acquit To find not guilty, as happened by a single vote at the trial of 1868
  • Carpetbagger Sneer for a postwar arrival, named for a cheap travel bag
  • Codes Black ___: laws passed by Southern states after 1865 to restrict Black citizens
  • Commission Panel of senators, representatives and high-court judges that settled the 1876 count
  • Compromise ___ of 1877: the bargain that put Hayes in the White House
  • Deadlock Stalemate, like the one over who had won the presidency in 1876
  • Democrat Member of the party that regained control of the South by 1877
  • Election The one of 1876 was so close that it took months to settle
  • Electoral ___ votes: the kind that decide a presidency, bitterly contested in 1876
  • Grandfather ___ clause: loophole that excused a man from voting tests because of an ancestor
  • Impeach A vote of 126 to 47 in February 1868 did this to the president
  • Jim Crow ___ laws: rules of racial separation that followed Reconstruction
  • Poll tax Fee a person had to pay before voting
  • Redeemer One of the white Southern politicians who overturned Reconstruction governments
  • Republican Member of the party of Lincoln
  • Scalawag Slur, once a word for low-grade farm animals, for a local ally of the new governments
  • Segregation Separate railcars, benches and waiting rooms, required by law
  • Solid ___ South: the region's one-party voting bloc for decades afterward
  • Supreme ___ Court: its 1883 ruling struck down the public-places act of 1875
  • Tenure ___ of Office Act: the 1867 law at the center of the trial of 1868
  • Troops The last national ones guarding Southern statehouses were pulled out in 1877
  • Withdraw To pull out or take back

How this list was compiled: Clues written for this site for grades 7 to 11 United States history, in five sets: plans to rebuild the Union, amendments and rights, freed people and new beginnings, land and labor, and the backlash and the end. Dates and laws were checked against English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), National Archives milestone documents (archives.gov) and United States Senate history pages (senate.gov), in October 2026. Answers are terms, laws and places; no person is an answer. Licence: own work

How it works

This Reconstruction crossword puzzle prints on Letter or A4 with its answer key. The first puzzle has 12 basic words, among them Amendment, Bureau, Sharecropper, Carpetbagger, Citizenship and Congress. Answers are terms, laws and places: no person is an answer.

Read the full guide

Five sets after the basics

Plans to Rebuild the Union has Amnesty, Oath, District and Readmit. Amendments and Rights has Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Suffrage. Freed People and New Beginnings has Emancipation, Contract, Savings and Exoduster. Land and Labor has Tenant, Lien, Credit and Debt. Backlash and the End has Scalawag, Redeemer, Codes and Compromise.

Dates a class can check

Clues carry the dates of the unit: December 6, 1865, and July 9, 1868, for two of the amendments, July 1866 for the first state let back in, February 1868 for the impeachment vote, and 1877 for the Compromise.

  • The clues name slavery and the laws that followed plainly, without violent detail. Read the clue list before printing for a younger class.

Questions and answers

What grade is the Reconstruction crossword puzzle for?

Reconstruction Basics suits grades 5 to 8, with answers such as Union, Veto, Freedom and Ballot. The five themed sets use the vocabulary of a middle or high school United States history unit. These bands are our judgment, not a published standard.

Does the Reconstruction crossword puzzle have an answer key?

Yes. The key is the last sheet of every print: the grid filled in, with the answers listed by clue number. It costs nothing and asks for no sign-up.

What were the three Reconstruction amendments?

The Thirteenth (1865) abolished slavery. The Fourteenth (1868) granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and promised equal protection of the laws. The Fifteenth (1870) protected the right to vote regardless of race or color.

When did Reconstruction end?

It is usually dated 1865 to 1877. After the disputed election of 1876, the Compromise of 1877 settled the presidency, and the last federal troops guarding Southern statehouses were withdrawn.

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