APUSH Period 5 Key Terms (Sections 7-9)

Homestead Act of 1862

A law that provided a settler with 160 acres of land if he promised to live on it and work it for at least five years. About 500,000 families took advantage of this ____________, while many more bought land from private purveyors. Unfortunately, the parcels of land on the Great Plains were difficult to farm, owing to lack of rain and hard-packed soil. Many homesteaders left the land behind and returned home. See: sodbusters.

Morrill Land Grant Act

Passed in 1862, this act gave federal lands to states for the purpose of building schools that would teach agriculture, engineering, and technical trades. It provided the foundation for the state university system still in use throughout the United States.

Pacific Railway Act

This 1862 act approved building a transcontinental railroad that would transform the west by linking the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific. An example of infrastructure spending, it had been held up for several years by arguments over whether the route should be from the South or the North, given the economic opportunity such a rail line would provide.

Reconstruction

A period (1865-1877) of rebuilding and reforming the South following the Civil War. It is considered a failure, as African Americans were left destitute and disenfranchised for another century. See: Black Codes, Civil Rights Bill of 1866, Civil Rights Act of 1875, Freedman's Bureau, Military Reconstruction Act, Ten Percent Plan, Wade-Davis Bill.

Andrew Johnson

Seventeenth President. Served 1865-1869. One of only two presidents to be impeached; like Bill Clinton, he was not convicted. Took office after Lincoln's assassination. A Democrat who had run with the Republican Lincoln, he was disliked by Congress, especially for his mild terms for Reconstruction and disinterest in protecting newly freed slaves; this all led to Radical Republicans passing the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment.

Ten Percent Plan

Also known as the "Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction," Lincoln proposed this plan in 1863 as a way to bring Southern states back under the wing of the federal government. The plan reestablished state governments and required at least 10 percent of the states' voters to swear an oath of loyalty to the United States and the Constitution. Lincoln was also prepared to grant complete pardons to any former Confederate, but required an oath of allegiance and agreement to eliminate slavery. See: Wade-Davis Bill.

Freedman's Bureau

A government program created in 1865 to help manage and assist newly emancipated slaves. The bureau provided assistance in the form of food, shelter, and medical attention to African Americans. Eventually, the bureau would establish schools across the South to help educate large numbers of former slaves. The Freedman's Bureau struggled as Congress refused to increase its funding, which expired in 1872.

Black Codes

Laws passed by Southern legislatures in response to legal emancipation of slaves. These codes restricted the actions, movements, and freedoms of African Americans. Under these codes, African Americans could not own land, so they were tied instead to small plots leased from a landowner. This began the system of sharecropping. See: Jim Crow laws, Reconstruction.

Sharecropping

________ would lease land and borrow supplies to till their plots, while giving a significant portion of their harvest to the landowner as payment for the loan. This exploitative system ensured that farmers were never able to harvest enough to pay the landlord and feed their families. Generations of African Americans remained tied to their plot of land until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. See: Black Codes, Great Migration.

Fourteenth Amendment

A response to the lackluster Reconstruction efforts by President Johnson. Proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, it protected the rights of all U.S. citizens, granted all African Americans full citizenship and civil rights, and required states to adhere to the due process and equal protection clauses of the Constitution. Furthermore, it disallowed former Confederate officers from holding state or federal office. It would decrease the proportional representation of any state that denied suffrage to any able citizen.

Military Reconstruction Act

Passed in 1867 by a Radical Republican Congress, it placed the South under martial law, dividing the South into five districts that would be governed by a Union general stationed in each. The act further tightened the readmission requirements of former Confederate states by requiring petitioning states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and provide for universal manhood suffrage. The act was a response to the leniency displayed by President Johnson toward the Confederacy.

Fifteenth Amendment

Ratified in 1870, in barred any state from denying a citizen's right to vote on the basis of race, color, or previous servitude. However, it did not ban poll taxes or literacy tests, which would be a loophole exploited by whites after the end of Reconstruction to suppress African American voters.

Scalawags

Coined by Southern Democrats, it was a derogatory term for Southern Republicans that meant they were pirates who sought to steal from state governments and line their own pockets. See: carpetbagger, Reconstruction.

Carpetbaggers

A pejorative term for the stereotype of the Northerner who packed all of his worldly possessions in a suitcase made from carpet, with the aim of moving to the South during Reconstruction to make a fortune. In the present day, the term is used to describe politicians who move to an area they have no previous connection with in order to gain election.

Ku Klux Klan

An underground society of whites who ruthlessly and successfully used terrorist tactics to frighten both white and black Republicans in the South. While quashed by the Force Acts of 1870 and 1871, the organization survived, resurfacing and spreading throughout the country in later years. See: Redeemers.

Redeemers

A political movement that sought to return control of the former Confederacy to white Southerners. Their policy, Redemption, sought to purge the South of the influence of Republicans, carpetbaggers, and newly emancipated slaves. See: Compromise of 1877, Jim Crow laws, Ku Klux Klan.

Rutherford B. Hayes

Nineteenth President. Served 1877-1881. While a Civil War veteran and a Republican, he ended Reconstruction as part of the Compromise of 1877 to resolve the disputed 1876 election. Enacted modest civil service reform. Ordered federal troops to break up the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. Pledged not to run for reelection and returned to Ohio.

Compromise of 1877

A deal that resolved the hung election of 1876. It provided that Rutherford B. Hayes would become president only if he agreed to remove the last remaining federal troops stationed in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. The end of martial law in the South signaled the end of Reconstruction in the United States. See: Samuel Tilden.