U.S. History: Reconstruction Through the 1920s

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering U.S. History from Reconstruction through the Gilded Age, Western Expansion, the Progressive Era, Imperialism, World War I, and the 1920s.

Special Field Order No. 15

An 1865 military directive issued by General William Tecumseh Sherman that set aside confiscated coastal land for freed families, originating the phrase '40 acres and a mule.'

Freedmen's Bureau

A federal agency operating from 1865 to 1872 tasked with overseeing all aspects of the social and economic conditions of formerly enslaved people in the postwar South.

Black Codes

State-level laws enacted across the South during presidential Reconstruction to restrict African American freedom and force freedmen back into agricultural labor.

Fourteenth Amendment

A constitutional amendment that established birthright citizenship for African Americans and mandated equal protection of the laws.

Reconstruction Act of 1867

Radical Republican legislation that divided the South into military districts governed by Union commanders, while enfranchising Black men and disenfranchising former Confederate leaders.

Crop-Lien System

A credit system in which southern sharecroppers and tenant farmers secured supplies by pledging a claim, or lien, on their upcoming harvest, usually resulting in perpetual debt.

Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871

A federal Enforcement Act that expanded executive authority to combat white supremacist terror groups in the South, successfully crushing the Ku Klux Klan by 1872.

Convict Lease System

A post-Reconstruction labor system in the New South where state governments leased prisoners, disproportionately Black men, to private companies and plantations under brutal conditions.

Plessy v. Ferguson

The 1896 Supreme Court ruling that established the 'separate but equal' legal doctrine, permitting racial segregation in public facilities across the South until 1954.

Homestead Act of 1862

Federal legislation offering 160 acres of public western land to anyone who paid a filing fee and cultivated the property continuously for five years.

Battle of Little Bighorn

An 1876 military clash where Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors defeated General George Custer's Seventh Cavalry after the U.S. broke its treaty over gold discovered in the Black Hills.

Carlisle Indian School

A government-funded off-reservation boarding school established to strip Native American children of their traditional dress, language, and culture through forced assimilation.

Dawes Allotment Act

An 1887 federal policy that dismantled communal tribal reservations by dividing land into individual private parcels, leading to extensive loss of Native land to white ownership.

Wounded Knee Massacre

The 1890 killing of hundreds of Lakota Sioux adherents of the Ghost Dance by U.S. troops in South Dakota, marking the symbolic end of the armed Indian Wars.

Taylorism

A management theory developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor that utilized time-and-motion studies to subdivide tasks, deskill laborers, and maximize industrial efficiency.

The Gospel of Wealth

Andrew Carnegie's 1889 argument that industrialists with great wealth had a moral obligation to act as trustees and distribute their fortunes for the common good through philanthropy.

Knights of Labor

An industrial union founded in 1869 open to all who toiled, advocating an eight-hour workday, an end to child labor, and the replacement of the wage system with worker-owned cooperatives.

Haymarket Bombing

An 1886 incident in Chicago where an explosive thrown during a labor rally triggered deadly gunfire, producing an anti-radical hysteria that led to the Knights of Labor's demise.

Pullman Strike

An 1894 nationwide rail boycott led by Eugene V. Debs and the American Railway Union that was crushed after the federal government deployed troops and obtained a court injunction.

Farmers' Alliances

Agrarian organizations founded in the 1870s and 1880s to build cooperative stores and grain elevators to break the credit monopoly of merchants and combat railroad abuses.

Bimetallism

A monetary policy advocating the unlimited coinage of both gold and silver ('free silver') to inflate the currency supply and relieve indebted farmers.

Teller Amendment

An 1898 resolution passed alongside the declaration of war against Spain asserting that the United States had no intention of exercising sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over Cuba.

Platt Amendment

A 1901 congressional provision appended to the Cuban constitution that effectively nullified the Teller Amendment by granting the U.S. the right to intervene militarily and lease naval bases.

Anti-Imperialist League

An organization established in 1898 to oppose the annexation of the Philippines, arguing that governing foreign subjects without consent contradicted American democratic traditions.

Hull House

A settlement house founded in Chicago by Jane Addams in 1889 that offered social services, nursery care, and citizenship education to working-class immigrants.

Wisconsin Idea

A progressive reform package pioneered by Governor Robert La Follette implementing the direct primary, workers' compensation, progressive taxation, and independent state regulatory commissions.

Roosevelt Corollary

Theodore Roosevelt's 1904 expansion of the Monroe Doctrine asserting the right of the United States to exercise an 'international police power' in Latin America to stabilize financial affairs.

War Industries Board

A World War I regulatory agency headed by Bernard Baruch that converted domestic industry to military output by fixing commodity prices, allocating raw resources, and setting production quotas.

Committee on Public Information

A World War I federal propaganda organization headed by George Creel that mobilized pro-war public sentiment and popularized anti-German wartime conformity.

Espionage and Sedition Acts

Wartime laws passed in 1917 and 1918 that penalized disloyal or abusive language regarding the U.S. government and imprisoned antiwar socialists and union organizers.

Fourteen Points

Woodrow Wilson's 1918 peace blueprint outlining terms for post-World War I global stability, including freedom of the seas, disarmament, reduction of trade barriers, and a League of Nations.

Palmer Raids

A series of aggressive, warrantless government raids in 1919 and 1920 orchestrated by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to detain and deport thousands of immigrant unionists and political radicals.

Welfare Capitalism

A 1920s employer initiative offering improved safety, health coverage, pension packages, and recreation programs designed to dissuade industrial workers from joining labor unions.

Harlem Renaissance

An African American literary, musical, and artistic movement of the 1920s based in New York City that celebrated racial heritage and introduced the concept of the 'New Negro.'

Immigration Act of 1924

Restrictive federal legislation establishing strict annual national origin quotas designed to curb immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe while entirely excluding immigrants from Asia.

Scopes Trial

A 1925 Tennessee court case testing the state ban against teaching Darwinian evolution in public schools, highlighting deep divisions between religious fundamentalists and modernists.