Reconstruction Terms

Freedmen

The men and women who had been enslaved

Reconstruction

The rebuilding of the South after the Civil War

Amnesty

A government pardon

Freedmen’s Bureau

A government agency founded during Reconstruction to help former slaves

Thirteenth Amendment

An 1865 amendment to the United States Constitution that banned slavery throughout the nation

Black Codes

The Southern laws that severely limited the rights of African Americans after the Civil War

Radical Republicans

A member of Congress during Reconstruction who wanted to break the power of wealthy southern plantation owners and ensure that freedmen received the right to vote

Fourteenth Amendment

An 1868 amendment to the United States Constitution that guarantees equal protection of the laws

Reconstruction Act

an 1867 law that threw out the Southern state governments that refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment

Fifteenth Amendment

An 1869 amendment to the United States Constitution that forbids any state to deny African Americans the right to vote because of race

Scalawag

A white southerner who supported the Republicans during Reconstruction

Carpetbagger

An uncomplimentary nickname for a northerner who went to the South after the Civil War

Ku Klux Klan

A secret society organized in the South after the Civil War to reassert white supremacy by means of violence

Sharecropper

A person who rents a plot of land from another person and farms it in exchange for a share of a crop

Poll tax

A tax required before a person can vote

Literacy test

An examination to see if a person can read and write; used in the past to restrict voting rights

Grandfather clause

In the post-Reconstruction South, a law that excused a voter from a literacy test if his grandfather had been eligible to vote on January 1, 1867

Jim Crow laws

Laws that separated people of different races in public places in the South

Compromise of 1877

an agreement by Republican presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes to end Reconstruction in return for congressional Democrats accepting his inauguration as President after the disputed election of 1876

Segregation

the legal separation of people based on racial, ethnic, or other differences