Reconstruction Vocab. (ENL)

Reconstruction (1865-1877)

the period after the Civil War in the United States when the southern states were reorganized and brought back into the Union

Presidential Reconstruction

Lincoln and Johnson's plan - No revenge on the South; lenient policy after Civil War. Included the 13th Amendment.

Congressional Reconstruction

A process led by the Radical Republicans that led to the usage of military force to protect blacks' rights. Included the 14th and 15th Amendments and dividing the South into military districts to protect the rights of freedmen.

Suffrage

the right to vote

Thirteenth (13) Amendment (1865)

Abolished slavery everywhere in the United States

Fourteenth (14) Amendment (1868)

granted citizenship to any person born or naturalized in the United States; this amendment protects citizens from abuses by state governments, and ensures due process and equal protection of the law. It overrode the Dred Scott decision.

Fifteenth (15) Amendment (1870)

Prohibited states from denying voting rights to African Americans.

Freedmen's Bureau (1865-1872)

Created to aid newly emancipated slaves by providing food, clothing, medical care, education, and legal support.

Emancipated

freed

Freedman

A person who has been freed from slavery

Military Reconstruction Act of 1867

South divided into 5 military districts; states to guarantee full suffrage for blacks; ratify 14th amendment

Lynching

putting to death a person by the illegal action of a mob. Thousands of Black people were lynched during Reconstruction until 1950..

Segregation

Separation of people based on racial, ethnic, or other differences

Jim Crow Laws

Laws designed to enforce segregation of blacks from whites

disenfranchise

to deprive someone of the right to vote

poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses

ways to keep African Americans from voting

Sharecropping

A system used on southern farms after the Civil War in which farmers worked land owned by someone else in return for a small portion of the crops.

KKK and White League

opposed the rights of freedman by violence and terrorism