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Thirteenth amendement

Constitutional amendment adopted in 1865 that irrevocably abolished slavery throughout the United States.

Carpetbaggers

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

Crittenden Compromise

Crittenden introduced legislation that would reinstate the Missouri Compromise line, forbid the abolition of slavery on federal land in slaveholding states, compensate owners for runaway slaves, and other amendments to support the institution of slavery.

Wilmot Proviso

Proposal to prohibit slavery in any land acquired in the Mexican War; defeated by southern senators, led by John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, in 1846 and 1847.

Bull Run

The first land engagement of the Civil War, which took place on July 21, 1861, at Manassas Junction, Virginia, and at which Union troops quickly retreated.

Bull Run, second Battle of

Civil War engagement that took place one year after the first Battle of Bull Run, on August 29–30, during which Confederates captured the federal supply depot at Manassas Junction, Virginia, and forced Union troops back to Washington.

Tejanos

Texas settlers of Spanish or Mexican descent.

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.

Harper’s Ferry

Site of abolitionist John Brown’s failed raid on the federal arsenal, October 16–17, 1859; Brown became a martyr to his cause after his capture and execution.

Filibustering

organized unauthorized military expeditions into Mexico and Central America with the intention of establishing colonies

Ku Klux Klan

Group organized in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 to terrorize former slaves who voted and held political offices during Reconstruction; a revived organization in the 1910s and 1920s that stressed white, Anglo-Saxon, fundamentalist Protestant supremacy; revived a third time to fight the civi

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.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

1854 law sponsored by Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas to allow settlers in newly organized territories north of the Missouri border to decide the slavery issue for themselves; fury over the resulting repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 led to violence in Kansas and to the formation of the Republican Party.