APUSH Ch. 15 Terms

"Lost Cause"

Romanticized, revisionist ideology developed by former Confederates portraying the Civil War as a heroic struggle for states' rights rather than slavery. It mythologized Confederate leaders, minimized slavery's role, and justified segregation, profoundly shaping Southern identity and national memory into the 20th century.

Lincoln's Reconstruction Plan

"Ten Percent Plan" (1863) offering pardons to Confederates who took loyalty oaths and allowing states to rejoin when 10% of 1860 voters did so. It required states to abolish slavery but imposed no other conditions, prioritizing rapid reunification over Black rights.

Wade-Davis Bill

1864 Congressional alternative requiring 50% of white males to take "ironclad" loyalty oaths swearing they had never supported the Confederacy and demanding stronger guarantees of Black rights. Lincoln pocket-vetoed it, exposing the rift between moderate and Radical Republicans.

John Wilkes Booth

Confederate sympathizer and actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. His act eliminated the leader most capable of balancing reconciliation with justice, profoundly affecting Reconstruction's course.

Freedmen's Bureau

Federal agency (1865-1872) providing food, medical care, education, and legal assistance to formerly enslaved people and poor whites. Despite inadequate funding and Southern white hostility, it established thousands of schools and helped negotiate labor contracts.

Black Codes

Laws passed by Southern states in 1865-66 restricting African Americans' freedom through vagrancy laws, labor contracts, and prohibitions on property ownership and jury service. These essentially attempted to recreate slavery under new names, outraging Northerners.

Civil Rights Act

(1866) First federal law defining citizenship and guaranteeing equal rights regardless of race. Passed over President Johnson's veto, it declared all persons born in the U.S. (except Native Americans) were citizens with equal protection under law.

Impeachment of Johnson

1868 attempt to remove President Andrew Johnson for violating the Tenure of Office Act by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The Senate acquitted him by one vote, but his power was broken and Radical Reconstruction proceeded.

13th Amendment

Ratified December 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States, except as punishment for crime. This loophole would later enable exploitative convict labor systems.

14th Amendment

Ratified July 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S., guaranteed equal protection and due process, and prohibited states from abridging citizens' privileges and immunities. Its full promise remained unfulfilled for a century.

15th Amendment

Ratified March 1870, prohibited denying voting rights based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." It enfranchised Black men but omitted women and left loopholes Southern states would exploit through literacy tests and other measures.

Congressional Reconstruction

Radical Republican program (1867-1877) dividing the South into five military districts, requiring new state constitutions guaranteeing Black male suffrage, and mandating ratification of the 14th Amendment. It represented the most aggressive federal intervention in state affairs in American history.

Tenure of Office Act

1867 law requiring Senate approval before the president could remove certain officeholders. Designed to protect Radical Republicans in Johnson's cabinet, its violation became the basis for Johnson's impeachment.

Command of the Army Act

1867 law requiring the president to issue military orders through the General of the Army (Grant) and forbidding removal of military commanders without Senate consent. It aimed to prevent Johnson from obstructing Reconstruction enforcement.

Civil Rights Act of 1875

Final Reconstruction-era civil rights law guaranteeing equal access to public accommodations, theaters, and transportation regardless of race. The Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1883, ending federal protection of civil rights until the 1960s.

Scalawags

Derogatory term for white Southern Republicans who supported Reconstruction. They included former Whigs, small farmers who resented planter dominance, and pragmatists seeking economic development. Democrats portrayed them as traitors to white supremacy.

Carpetbaggers

Pejorative name for Northern Republicans who moved South during Reconstruction. Though stereotyped as opportunistic exploiters, many were idealistic teachers, missionaries, and businessmen genuinely committed to rebuilding the South and advancing Black rights.

Sharecropping

Labor system replacing slavery in which landless farmers (Black and white) worked land in exchange for a share of the crop. While theoretically providing independence, it trapped families in cycles of debt and poverty approximating slavery's economic exploitation.

Crop-Lien System

Credit arrangement where farmers borrowed against future crops to purchase supplies at exorbitant interest rates from merchants who held liens on their harvests. This system kept farmers perpetually indebted and dependent, particularly affecting sharecroppers.

Convict-Lease System

Southern practice of leasing prisoners (overwhelmingly Black men convicted of minor offenses) to private companies for labor. This brutal system, exploiting the 13th Amendment's exception for punishment, generated state revenue while providing cheap labor to mines and plantations.

Ulysses S. Grant

18th U.S. President (1869-1877), Civil War hero whose administration was marred by corruption scandals, though Grant himself was honest. He vigorously enforced Reconstruction and civil rights laws but Northern support waned during economic depression.

Horace Greeley

New York Tribune editor and reformer who ran against Grant in 1872 as candidate of Liberal Republicans and Democrats. His platform called for reconciliation with the South and ending Reconstruction; he lost badly and died shortly after the election.

Credit Mobilier

1872 scandal involving Union Pacific Railroad officials who created a construction company, charged inflated prices, and distributed stock to congressmen as bribes. The exposure damaged Grant's administration though he wasn't directly involved.

Whiskey Ring

1875 scandal in which distillers and government officials conspired to evade taxes on whiskey. Grant's private secretary was implicated, further damaging the administration's reputation despite Grant's personal honesty.

Specie Resumption Act

1875 law requiring the Treasury to redeem greenbacks with gold beginning in 1879. This deflationary policy pleased Eastern creditors but hurt Western farmers and debtors who wanted inflation through continued paper money.

Greenbacks

Paper currency issued during the Civil War, not backed by gold or silver. Debtors and farmers wanted to keep them in circulation to create inflation and ease debt burdens, while creditors demanded return to the gold standard.

Panic of 1873

Severe economic depression triggered by over-speculation in railroads and the failure of Jay Cooke's banking house. The resulting unemployment and business failures lasted six years and turned Northern attention away from Southern racial justice.

Seward's Folly

Derisive term for Secretary of State William Seward's 1867 purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million. Critics ridiculed buying this "icebox," but the acquisition proved enormously valuable for resources and strategic position.

Treaty of Washington

1871 agreement between the United States and Britain settling Civil War-era disputes, including British-built Confederate commerce raiders (Alabama claims). It established international arbitration and improved Anglo-American relations.

KKK (Ku Klux Klan)

Terrorist organization founded in Tennessee (1866) using violence, intimidation, and murder to restore white supremacy and Democratic power. Members wore white robes and hoods while whipping, lynching, and driving Black voters and white Republicans from polls.

Midnight Rides

KKK tactic of nighttime raids on African American homes to terrorize families, punish those who asserted their rights, and prevent political participation. These attacks included whippings, murders, and burning of homes and schools.

Red Shirts and White Leagues

Paramilitary Democratic organizations in the 1870s using violence and intimidation more openly than the KKK. They disrupted Republican meetings, assassinated officials, and used armed force to "redeem" Southern states from Republican control.

Ku Klux Klan Acts

Series of 1870-71 federal laws authorizing the president to use military force against terrorist organizations, suspend habeas corpus, and prosecute conspiracies to deny civil rights. Grant's aggressive enforcement temporarily suppressed the KKK.

Social Darwinism

Misapplication of evolutionary theory to society, claiming competition produced "survival of the fittest" and that poverty, inequality, and racial hierarchy reflected natural laws. This pseudo-scientific racism justified abandoning Reconstruction and African Americans to their "natural" subordinate position.

Election of 1876

Disputed presidential contest between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden. Tilden won the popular vote, but contested electoral votes in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana left the outcome unresolved for months.

Compromise of 1877

Informal agreement resolving the 1876 election: Democrats accepted Hayes's presidency in exchange for withdrawal of federal troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction. This bargain sacrificed Black rights for Republican power and national "reconciliation."

Redeemers

Conservative Democrats who regained control of Southern state governments after Reconstruction, claiming to "redeem" the region from Republican rule. They slashed government spending, reversed civil rights gains, and established white supremacist rule.

Readjusters

Biracial political coalition in Virginia (1870s-80s) advocating reduced payment of state debt and increased funding for public schools and services. Led by William Mahone, they briefly challenged Redeemer dominance before being suppressed through racial appeals.

Henry Grady

Atlanta newspaper editor who promoted the "New South" vision of industrial development, sectional reconciliation, and modernization while maintaining white supremacy and romanticizing the "Lost Cause." His 1886 speech popularized this ideology.

Uncle Remus

Fictional elderly Black storyteller created by white author Joel Chandler Harris in 1879. The character's dialect stories of "Br'er Rabbit" entertained white audiences while perpetuating "happy slave" stereotypes and romanticizing plantation life.

Minstrel Shows

Popular entertainment featuring white performers in blackface makeup presenting racist caricatures of African Americans as lazy, ignorant, and childlike. These shows spread and normalized degrading stereotypes nationwide from the 1840s through early 1900s.

Maggie Lena Walker

First African American woman to charter and serve as president of a bank (St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, Richmond, 1903). She built economic institutions to promote Black self-sufficiency and advancement during the nadir of race relations.

Booker T. Washington

Most prominent Black leader of the late 19th/early 20th century, founder of Tuskegee Institute. He advocated industrial education, economic self-help, and accommodation to segregation, believing gradual progress through work would eventually earn white respect.

Atlanta Compromise

Booker T. Washington's controversial 1895 speech accepting social segregation ("separate as the fingers") in exchange for economic opportunities and education. Critics like W.E.B. Du Bois condemned this acceptance of inequality, but many whites and some Blacks supported his pragmatism.

Plessy v. Ferguson

Landmark 1896 Supreme Court decision upholding Louisiana's segregated railroad cars and establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine. Justice John Marshall Harlan's lone dissent called the Constitution "color-blind," but the decision legitimized Jim Crow segregation until Brown v. Board (1954).

Cumming v. County Board of Education

1899 Supreme Court case refusing to intervene when a Georgia county closed its Black high school while maintaining white high schools. The decision showed the Court's complete abandonment of the 14th Amendment's promise of equal protection.

Poll Tax

Fee required to vote, designed to exclude poor Black (and white) voters. Collected cumulatively from previous years, these taxes effectively barred most African Americans from political participation across the South by 1900.

Literacy or Understanding Tests

Voting requirement demanding citizens read and interpret constitutional passages to officials' satisfaction. Administered discriminatorily by white registrars, these tests disfranchised Black voters regardless of education while barely literate whites passed through sympathetic interpretation.

Grandfather Clauses

Laws exempting men whose ancestors voted before Reconstruction (thus excluding virtually all Black men) from literacy tests and poll taxes. These provisions allowed poor, illiterate whites to vote while maintaining barriers against African Americans.

Williams v. Mississippi

1898 Supreme Court decision upholding Mississippi's literacy tests, poll taxes, and understanding clauses, ruling they didn't violate the 15th Amendment on their face, despite their obvious discriminatory intent and effect. This decision greenlighted disfranchisement across the South.