Thesis Statement Development Assignment
Preliminary Topic: Reconstruction
Organization Style: Topical (Choose from Chronological, Topical, or Comparison-
Contrast)
Question to be Addressed: What effect did Lincoln’s assassination have on the
Reconstruction of the South?
(Note: This questions should only be used for producing your thesis. It is not your thesis and should not appear in your paper.)
General Ideas: Lincoln’s attitude toward freed blacks
Lincoln’a attitude toward the South as a whole
Presidential Reconstruction
Radical Reconstruction
South’s reaction to Radical Reconstruction
Carpetbaggers and Scalawags
KKK
Sharecropping
The South at the end of Reconstruction
Segregation
Grandfather clauses
Jim Crow laws
Black codes
Poll taxes
Thesis Statement: Lincoln’s assassination doomed the South to a decade of suffering at the hands of Radical Republican policies and ultimately mired the
South in its nineteenth century outlook for the next hundred years.
THESIS STATEMENT DEVELOPMENT ASSIGNMENT continued on next page……

Note: Your ideas may be less specific—lists of names, concepts, etc. You should have at least ten listed in your General Ideas list and may be even more since yours won’t be as specific as the above. To help you come up with these general ideas, find a very general book about your topic or even refer to a good encyclopedia like Britannica. It will be necessary to do some general reading about the preliminary topic you chose before formulating the question you wish to address. The question and the thesis statement that you develop should be closely related.
For organizational style:
Chronological means you will write about events in your paper in the time order they happen. Ex: 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, etc.
Topical means that you will break your subject down into related topics and write about those topics in a logical order you determine. For example, if you were writing about
Abraham Lincoln’s personal life you could address the following topics: Lincoln as son,
Lincoln as friend, Lincoln as business partner, Lincoln as husband, Lincoln as father,
Lincoln as provider, etc.
Comparison and Contrast requires you to write about two subjects and compare and contrast their similarities and differences in every paragraph of your paper. Both subjects must be mentioned in your thesis statement and given equal weight in your paper.