1.04 US History - A New South

Freedmen’s Bureau

to help previously enslaved people have access to food and things as they embraced their newfound freedom

• most people stayed to work, but other people needed help

sharecroppers

freedmen became these people in order to provide for themselves and for their family

• they are tenant farmers who give apart of each crop as rent

tenant farmer

a person who farms on rented land

• began contracts in debt to landowner

debt peonage

a system where a person compels and employer to pay off a debt with labor that many families could never leave because they could not satisfy their debt and save money for the future

• common among tenant farmers and sharecroppers

carpetbagger

northern that moved to the south to help rebuild by starting factories and reconstructing plantations

• created a republican majority in the south

• southern term used as an insult towards these northerners

• Southerners thought that northerners were taking advantage of them (which maybe they were)

scalawag

a white southerner who supported the radical republicans

• southern term used as an insult

• southerners accused scalawags of abusing laws and funds for reconstruction for their own personal gain

Hiram Rhodes Revels

first black person to serve in congress (1870-71)

Robert Smalls

first black person in the US navy (stole a ship from the confederacy), and elected to House of Representatives (1875-1887)

Josiah T. Walls

representative for florida (1871-76)

lost cause

historical interpretation of the civil war that attempts to glorify the confederacy and downplay the role of slavery in the war

• became an augment for the south to govern itself

• black people were “uncivilized”

Klu Klux Clan

white supremicist group determined on returning the US to the old south ways

• prevented many black people from excersizing their new rights