APUSH Chapter 15

free 105

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

type of farm tenancy that developed after the Civil War in which landless workers--often former slaves--farmed land in exchange for farm supplies and a share of the crop

crop lien

credit extended by merchants to tenants based on their future crops; under this system, high interest rates and the uncertainties of farming often led to inescapable debts

black codes

laws passed from 1865 to 1866 in southern states to restrict the rights of former slaves

civil rights bill of 1866

along with the 14th amendment, legislation that guaranteed the rights of citizenship to former slaves

14th amendment

1868 constitutional amendment that guaranteed rights of citizenship to former slaves, in words similar to those of the Civil Rights Act of 1866

reconstruction act

1867 law that established temporary military governments in ten Confederate states--except Tennessee--and required that the states ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and permit freedmen to vote

tenure of office act

1867 law that required the president to obtain Senate approval to remove any official whose appointment had also required Senate approval

impeachment

bringing charges against a public official; for example, the House of Representatives can impeach a president for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors: by majority vote, and after the trial the Senate can remove the president by a vote of two-thirds

15th amendment

constitutional amendment ratified in 1870, which prohibited states from discriminating in voting privileges on the basis of race

carpetbaggers

derisive term for northern emigrants who participated in the Republican governments of the Reconstruction South

scalawags

Southern white Republicans--some former Unionists--who supported Reconstruction governments

ku klux klan

group organized in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 to terrorize former slaves who voted and held political offices during Reconstruction

enforcement acts

three laws passed in 1870 and 1871 that tried to eliminate the Ku Klux Klan by outlawing it and other such terrorist societies; the laws allowed the president to deploy the army for that purpose

civil rights act of 1875

the last piece of Reconstruction legislation, which outlawed racial discrimination in places of public accommodation such as hotels and theaters

redeemers

post-Civil War Democratic leaders who supposedly saved the South from Yankee domination and preserved the primarily rural economy

bargain of 1877

deal made by a Republican and Democratic special congressional commission to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876; Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who had lost the popular vote, was declared the winner in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from involvement in politics in the South, marking the end of Reconstruction

us v. cruikshank

us supreme court case that gutted the enforcement acts and the reconstruction amendments by erasing convictions of people involved in the colfax, louisiana assaults. it weakened the federal civil rights enforcement and limited the 14th amendment to actions by state governments and narrowed private individuals' rights to it.