Study Guide: Reconstruction and the Gilded Age

Vocabulary flashcards covering major constitutional amendments, Reconstruction policies, industrial expansion, western migration, and Gilded Age labor disputes.

13th Amendment

A constitutional amendment that abolished slavery in the United States, except as punishment for a crime.

Reconstruction Act of 1867

Legislation that divided former Confederate states into five military districts and required them to create new state governments, ratify the 14th Amendment, and protect Black male voting rights.

14th Amendment

A constitutional amendment that granted citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States and guaranteed equal protection under the law.

Freedmen's Bureau

A federal agency established to assist formerly enslaved people and poor Southerners after the Civil War by providing food, education, medical care, legal assistance, and help finding work.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

A Supreme Court ruling that upheld racial segregation under the doctrine of "separate but equal," permitting segregation laws to continue for decades.

Compromise of 1877

An agreement that brought about the end of Reconstruction by removing federal troops from the South, allowing Southern Democrats to regain control of Southern state governments.

15th Amendment

A constitutional amendment that granted voting rights to African American men.

Black Codes

Laws passed by many Southern states during Reconstruction to restrict the rights of Black Americans, later followed by Jim Crow laws.

Sharecropping

An agricultural arrangement that often kept Black families and poor farmers trapped in debt in the post-Civil War South.

Ku Klux Klan

A white supremacist group that used violence and intimidation against African Americans during Reconstruction.

Transcontinental Railroad

A railroad completed in 1869 that linked the East and West coasts of the United States, greatly accelerating travel, trade, and settlement across the country.

Union Pacific Railroad

One of the two railroad companies that built the Transcontinental Railroad, laying tracks westward starting from Nebraska.

Central Pacific Railroad

One of the two railroad companies that built the Transcontinental Railroad, laying tracks eastward starting from California.

Promontory Summit, Utah

The geographic location where the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads joined in 1869 to complete the Transcontinental Railroad.

Hydraulic Mining

A mining technique that used powerful streams of water to blast away hillsides to uncover gold, which led to high gold yield but caused extensive deforestation, severe soil erosion, and sediment pollution in rivers.

Gilded Age

A term derived from an 1873 book by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner denoting the period from roughly the 1870s to 1900, characterized by surface prosperity and rapid industrial growth masking serious underlying social and political problems.

Robber Barons

A critical term for powerful industrialists who acquired vast wealth and power during the Gilded Age, often using monopolies, unfair business practices, and worker exploitation.

Captains of Industry

A positive term used by some historians to describe major Gilded Age business leaders because they established primary industries and donated significant wealth to philanthropic causes.

Haymarket Riot (1886)

A labor protest in Chicago advocating for an eight-hour workday that turned violent after a bomb was thrown at police, heightening public fear of labor unions and radicals.

Homestead Strike (1892)

A strike by steelworkers at Carnegie Steel's Homestead facility stemming from wage and working condition disputes, which concluded in the union's defeat and weakened labor power in the steel industry.

Pullman Strike (1894)

A walkout by Pullman Company workers following wage cuts unaccompanied by reductions in company rents, which was suppressed by federal troops sent by the government.