Reconstruction 1868-1877 glossary of key terms

Horatio Seymour

Democrat presidential candidate 1868 who campaigned against black equality

Horace Greeley

Founder and editor of the New York Tribune. Liberal Republican candidate in 1872 presidential election. Died just after the election.

Liberal Republican Party

New party which emerged to contest the 1872 presidential election. Grew out of dissatisfaction with Grant, but soon disintegrated after the election

Lyman Trumbull

Co-author of 13th Amendment. Critical of Stevens and Wade's attempts to manipulate the impeachment proceedings against Johnson

Reconstruction 'confederate style'

Aimed to resurrect as near as possible the old order of the south, a move encouraged by Johnson's decision to make the process of southern states readmittance to the union as easy as possible.

Redeem the south

Restore white rule to the south

Black Reconstruction

Phrase coined by historian William Dunning, who was very critical of the new governments established of the south in the late 1860s

Hiram Rhodes Revels

The first African American senator ( Mississippi 1870-71 )

Blanche K Bruce

African American Senator for Mississippi 1875-81

The Force Acts 1870-71

Legislation authorising President Grant to use the army to break up the KKK

The White League 1874 -

White paramilitary organisation which aimed to oust Republicans from office in the south. First established in Grant Parish, Louisiana

Battle of Liberty Place

Attempted insurrection by the 5,000 strong New Orleans White League vs. the state govt. of Louisiana. Eventually quashed by federal troops

Colfax Massacre 1873

Murder of c.150 blacks in / around the courthouse on Easter Sunday, in the wake of the contested gubernatorial elections of 1872. Perpetrators appealed their conviction to the US Supreme Court in US vs. Cruikshank

US vs. Cruikshank 1876

Ruled that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment applied to state government action, not the actions of individuals

Amnesty Act 1872

Restoration of rights returned to 150,000 ex-Confederates

Freedmen's Bureau 1865-72

An agency of the US Dept. of War, which aimed to assist the newly freed slaves cope with the demands of post-servitude life. Abruptly abandoned by Grant in 1872.

Civil Rights Act 1875

Last measure aimed to help southern blacks, aimed to prevent discrimination by hotels, theatres and railways. More a broad assertion of principle than actually having an impact. Undermined by the Test Cases of 1883. Last piece of civil rights legislation before 1957.

Rifle Clubs / Red Shirts

Paramilitary groups in the south

Rutherford B Hayes

Successful Republican presidential candidate in 1876

Samuel Tilden

Democrat candidate and winner of the popular vote in the 1876 presidential election, but lost in the Electoral College after the Compromise of 1877

Jim Crow laws

Segregation laws passed in most southern states in the 1890s

Congressional Reconstruction

Post war policies imposed by Congress on the South. Also known as Radical Reconstruction or Black Reconstruction:

Miscegenation

Sexual relations between blacks and whites

Constitutional amendments

Changes / additions to the US Constitution which require ratification ( approval ) by 75% of states

Gold Scandal 1869

The Black Friday gold panic was caused by the efforts of two investors, Jay Gould and his partner James Fisk, also called the Gold Ring, to corner the gold market on the New York Gold Exchange. Gould and Fisk hoped that befriending the President would get them privy information about up and coming government gold sales—information with which they manipulated the market. It worked, resulting in a scandal that undermined the credibility of Grant's presidency and the national economy. Gould and Fisk used their personal appearances with Grant to gain clout on Wall Street in addition to using their insider information.

Credit Mobilier Scandal 1872

Scandal of 1867, which came to public attention in 1872, involved the Union Pacific Railroad and the Crédit Mobilier of America construction company in the building of the eastern portion of the First Transcontinental Railroad. The scandal was in two parts. The construction company charged the railroad far higher rates than usual, and cash and $9 million in discounted stock were given as bribes to 15 powerful Washington politicians, including the Vice-President, the Secretary of the Treasury, four senators, and the Speaker and other members of the House

1873 Salary Grab

Grant signed a law that increased the president's salary from $25,000 a year to $50,000 a year. The law raised salaries of members of both houses of the United States Congress from $5,000 to $7,500. Although pay increases were constitutional, the act was passed in secret with a clause that gave the congressmen $5,000 in bonus payouts for the previous two years of their terms. Newspapers exposed the $5,000 bonus clause to the nation. The law was repealed in January 1874 and the bonuses returned to the treasury.

Grant missed an opportunity to make a statement by threatening a veto, even though a veto would have meant calling a special session of Congress to fund the government for the following year.

The Belknap Scandal 1876

A Democratic House investigation committee revealed that War Secretary, Belknap, had taken extortion money in exchange for an appointment to a lucrative Native American trading post. In 1870, responding to extensive lobbying by Belknap, Congress had authorized the War Department to award private trading post contracts to military forts throughout the nation. Native Americans would come into the forts and trade for food and clothing, generating huge profits (at the natives' expense). Belknap's wife Carrie, who desired to profit from these wealthy contracts, managed to secure a private trading post at Fort Sill for a personal friend from New York City, Caleb P. Marsh.

The Whiskey Ring 1875

The worst and most famous scandal to hit the Grant administration. Whiskey distillers had been evading taxes in the Midwest, bribing Treasury Department agents who in turn aided the distillers in evading taxes to the tune of up to $2 million per year. The agents would neglect to collect the required excise tax of 70 cents per gallon, and then split the illegal gains with the distillers. The ringleaders had to coordinate distillers, rectifiers, gaugers, storekeepers, revenue agents, and Treasury clerks by recruitment, impressment, and extortion. Both of Grant's private secretaries were implicated

The Sanborn Contracts 1874

The government hired private citizens and groups to collect taxes and excises illegally withheld from the Internal Revenue Service. This moiety contract system, although legal, led to extortion abuse in the loosely run Treasury Department. Treasury officials pressured Internal Revenue agents not to collect delinquent accounts so Sanborn could accumulate more. Although the collections were legal, Sanborn reaped $213,000 in commissions on $420,000 taken in taxes. A House investigation committee in 1874 revealed that Sanborn had split $156,000 of this with unnamed associates as "expenses." ( = members of cabinet and senate ) On June 22, 1874 President Grant, in an effort of reform, signed a bill into law that abolished the moiety contract system.

Henry Clay Warmoth

Louisiana governor 1868-72, sided with Liberal Republican / Fusion ticket in 1872, thus splitting the Republicans in Louisiana.

William Pitt Kellogg

Winner of highly disputed Louisiana gubernatorial election 1872, despite democrat resurgence in state politics

US vs. Reese 1876

The Court held that the Fifteenth Amendment did not confer the right of suffrage, but it prohibited exclusion from voting on racial grounds.Due to this ruling, states began to develop means to exclude blacks from voting while keeping within the constraints of the 14th Amendment. They adopted such devices as poll taxes (which many poor black and white sharecroppers, who lived on credit, did not have ready cash to pay); literacy tests, subjectively administered by white election officials, who tended in practice to exclude even educated blacks which is often very rare; grandfather clauses, which admitted voters whose grandfathers had voted as of a certain date, which also excluded blacks; and more restrictive residency requirements, which disqualified people who had to move to follow work.

Slaughterhouse Case 1873

a U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that the "Privileges or Immunities" Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution only protects the legal rights that are associated with federal U.S. citizenship, not those that are more fundamental and pertain to state citizenship

US vs. Cruikshank

After the Colfax Massacre (1873) the Supreme Court overturned the convictions of the white men, holding that the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies only to state action, not to actions by individual citizens African Americans in the South were left to the mercy of increasingly hostile state governments dominated by white Democratic legislatures; neither the legislatures, law enforcement or the courts worked to protect freedmen The Cruikshank ruling also allowed groups such as the Ku Klux Klan to flourish and continue to use paramilitary force to suppress black voting. As white Democrats dominated the Southern legislatures, they turned a blind eye on the violence. They refused to allow African Americans any right to bear arms. All five Justices in the majority had been appointed by Republicans (three by Lincoln, two by Grant). The lone Democratic appointee Nathan Clifford dissented.