APUSH Reconstruction Terms

Freedmen’s Bureau

Reconstruction agency established in 1865 to protect the legal rights of former slaves and to assist with their education, jobs, health care, and landowning

Sharecropping

Where landless workers (often former slaves) farmed land in exchange for supplies and part of the crop

Black Codes

Laws passed from 1856-1866 in southern states to restrict the rights of former slaves; to nullify the codes, congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment

Civil Rights Bill of 1866

Along with the 14th Amendment, a bill that guaranteed the rights of citizenship to former slaves

13th amendment

Ends slavery

14th Amendment

Guaranteed rights of citizenship to former slaves; equal protection, eliminates discriminatory laws, birthright citizenship

15th Amendment

Gave suffrage to all adult men regardless of race

Reconstruction Act

1867 law establishing temporary military governments in 10 confederate states (but not TN), requiring the states to ratify the 14th amendment and permit freedmen to vote

Tenure of Office Act

1867 law requiring the president to obtain senate approval to remove any official whose appointment had also required senate approval (President Andrew Johnson’s violation of the law by firing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton led to Johnson’s impeachment)

Areas of “reconstruction”

Social: how people treat each other, role of white and Black people in Southern society

Political: elections and representation, new policies

Economic: new systems to replace slavery

Physical: rebuild places destroyed by the Civil War

Presidential vs. Radical views

Presidential: no protections for freed people, confederate leaders typically get pardoned, appointed provisional governors and gave new Southern governments autonomy

Radical: protect freed people (Civil Rights Act, 14th/15th amendments), more harsh on old confederates, used the Reconstruction act to send in troops and restricted governments more with new state constitutions

Scalawags

People from the South supporting Rconstruction and Republican ideas (seen as traitors by other Southerners)

Carpetbaggers

People from the North who moved to the South

Ku Klux Klan

Group organized in TN to terrorize former slaves who voted and held office, with the intention to throw off Republican values

Enforcement Acts

Three laws passed in 1870 and 1871 trying to eliminate the KKK by outlawing it and allowing the President to deploy the army against it

Civil Rights Act of 1875

The last Reconstruction law; banned racial discrimination in public places

Redeemers

Post-Civil War Democratic leaders who sought to overthrow the Radical government and “redeem” the economy

Bargain of 1877

Deal made between Republicans and Democrats to resolve the disputed 1876 election; Republican Rutherford B. Hayes could be president, but troops withdrawn from Southern politics; marked the end of reconstruction