chapter 15

Public School System

One of the most significant accomplishments of state constitutional conventions during Reconstruction.

Emphasis on Education

Freedpeople viewed education as a way to achieve freedom during Reconstruction.

Baptists

The religious denomination that experienced the fastest growth in the post-emancipation South.

Political Rights

The primary concern of women's rights leaders like Elizabeth Cady Stanton during Reconstruction.

Mississippi Plan

A wave of violence designed to intimidate Black activists and suppress Black voters.

Compromise of 1877

Ended Reconstruction with the removal of Federal Troops in the South and made Rutherford B Hayes president after a contested election.

More than 2,000

The number of African American men who served in offices from local positions to U.S. senators by the end of Reconstruction in 1877.

Mound Bayou, Mississippi

A Delta town established in 1887 as an all-black settlement by Isaiah Montgomery and Ben Green.

Racial Violence

Major forms included riots against Black political authority, interpersonal fights, and organized vigilante groups during Reconstruction.

1866

The year the Ku Klux Klan was organized.

Sharecropping

The primary economic system that replaced slavery in the post-war South.

Enforcement Acts of 1870-1871

Legislation that made it criminal to deprive African Americans of their civil rights.

Depression of 1873

Affected Reconstruction efforts by shifting the national agenda to economic issues and southern devastation.

Withdrawal of federal troops

Best describes the overall outcome of Reconstruction by 1877, allowing white Democrats to regain control and lead to the Jim Crow era.

Fourteenth Amendment

Introduced a significant change by establishing the federal government's willingness to enforce the Bill of Rights over state authority.

New Departure strategy

Used by women's suffragists, arguing that the U.S. Constitution already guaranteed women the right to vote.

Ladies' Memorial Associations

Primarily responsible for burying and memorializing the dead in the South during Reconstruction.

Freedmen's Bureau

Established to redistribute lands to formerly enslaved people that had been abandoned and confiscated by the federal government.

13th Amendment

The amendment that legally abolished slavery throughout the United States.

Black Codes

Restrictive laws passed by Southern states that limited the freedoms and rights of freedmen and enforced labor contracts and curfews.

10% allegiance

The percentage of a state's voting population required to take an oath of allegiance before loyal governments could be established according to Lincoln's Reconstruction plan.

Andrew Johnson's leniency

A major difference between Johnson's Reconstruction plan and Lincoln's, involving leniency toward wealthy Confederates and refusal to protect freedpeople.

Reconstruction Act of 1867

Did not require a 10% allegiance pledge for southern states to rejoin the Union.

Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15

Primary goal was to set aside land in Georgia and South Carolina as a homestead for freedpeople.

Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce

Two African Americans who served as U.S. senators from Mississippi during Reconstruction.