The options of the question are, A) to get rich from the South’s misfortunes. B) to help Southerners to gain control of the new state governments. C) to prevent freedmen from being elected to office. D) to return Southern land to its former owners.
The correct answer is A) to get rich from the South’s misfortunes.
White Southerners though the Northerners’s goal that moved South during the Reconstruction was to get rich from the South’s misfortunes.
The Reconstruction period was from 1865 to 1877. During these years many people from the North came to the South to help with the Reconstruction. But Southern white people did not trust them because they thought their only goal was to get rich from the South’s misfortunes. Southerners new that Northerners were in their territories for financial gain and personal agenda, not to help. Southern people called Northerners “carpetbaggers”, a pejorative name to identify the Northerners.