Chapter 15+ APUSH Terms

Key vocabulary from Chapter 14, 15, and 17 in AMSCO.

Confederate States of America (1860-1865)

1) Formed from 11 southern states that seceded from the United States of America. These states included: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia.

2) Established their capitol in Richmond, VA and elected Jefferson Davis as the first president.

3) Modeled their constitution after the U.S. Constitution, but it contained several protections for the institution of slavery.

Emancipation Proclamation (1863)

1) Issued after the Battle of Antietam, this mandated that slaves in rebelling states were free.

2) This technically freed only 1% of slaves, as it couldn’t legally be enforced in many southern states during the Civil War.

3) This changed the narrative of the war, as troops now fought against slavery, and not just against secession.

Gettysburg Address (1863)

1) This was given by Abraham Lincoln, months after the actual battle.

2) Lincoln mentioned "a new birth of freedom" with ideals of liberty and equality as the basis of the founding of the United States.

3) By doing so, he created a larger purpose for the Civil War and established his commitment to continue the fight.

13th, 14th & 15th Amendments (1865, 1868, 1870)

1) The 13th Amendment abolished slavery.

2) The 14th Amendment declared that all persons born in the U.S. were citizens and granted equal protections to all citizens.

3) The 15th Amendment prohibited any state from denying anyone the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Therefore, it granted universal male suffrage.

Black Codes (1865)

1) These were adopted by many southern states after the Civil War.

2) They were meant to re-establish slavery under a different name by eliminating any rights that blacks had won in the immediate aftermath of the civil war, especially with respect to negotiating labor contracts.

3) As a result, the federal government created the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and eventually the 14th Amendment to grant freedman citizenship and provide them with protections against these unfair laws.

Freedmen’s Bureau (1865)

1) Agency established to help former black slaves and poor whites in the aftermath of the Civil War.

2) Served as an early example of a welfare agency, providing food, housing, medical aid, schooling, and legal assistance to those in need after the Civil War.

3) It had the greatest impact on the education of freed blacks, and it established 3,000 schools, including several colleges.

Radical Republicans (1866-1877)

1) Group led by Thaddeus Stephens and Charles Sumner who after the Civil War advocated for greater civil rights for blacks and policies that would punish Southern whites for their role in the war.

2) Led Congressional Reconstruction from 1866 to 1877, placing the Southern states under military control and forcing them to adopt the 14th Amendment.

3) They impeached President Andrew Johnson, but failed to remove him from office by 1 vote.

Sharecropping (late 1800s and early 1900s)

1) An agricultural system that emerged after the Civil War in which black and white farmers rented land and residences from a plantation owner in exchange for giving him a percentage of each year’s crop.

2) Most former slaves were forced into this system because Reconstruction failed to address their economic needs.

3) Plantation owners manipulated the system to keep their tenant farmers in constant debt and poverty, unable to leave their plantations.

Ku Klux Klan (1867)

1) An extremist, white supremacist group that was founded by former Confederate soldiers after the Civil War and was revived in the 1920s.

2) Its members cloaked themselves in sheets to conceal their identities and used violence to terrorize freed blacks and sympathetic whites in the South during Reconstruction.

3) This terrorist group used threats of violence to strip freed blacks of the rights that they earned during Reconstruction, including the right to vote.

Redeemers (1870s)

1) Southern Democratic politicians who sought to gain back control of the South towards the end of Reconstruction.

2) Wanted to restore the glory of the South by limiting the influence of Republicans, scalawags, carpetbaggers, and Freedmen in the southern states after the Civil War.

3) Worked to re-establish white supremacy in the South by establishing segregation and passing laws that made it harder for freed blacks to vote.

Compromise of 1877 (1877)

1) Agreement that resolved the 1876 election and officially ended Reconstruction.

2) In exchange for the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, winning the presidency, Hayes agreed to end Reconstruction and withdraw the last federal troops from the South.

3) This deal allowed the Redeemers to regain power in the South.

Tuskegee Institute (1881)

1) Founded in Alabama by Booker T. Washington, it was established to provide practical education for African Americans in the New South.

2) Booker T. Washington envisioned the school as a model for industrial education and economic advancement for African Americans. He believed that African Americans could gain equality by demonstrating their economic value through vocational skills.

3) Figures such as George Washington Carver revolutionized agricultural science through his research at the school on crop rotation, soil enrichment, and alternative crops like peanuts and sweet potatoes. His innovations helped lift Southern farmers out of poverty and turned the school into a center for agricultural education.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

1) Supreme Court case that upheld the constitutionality of segregation laws emerging in the New South.

2) Case stated that as long as blacks were provided with “separate but equal” facilities, segregation laws did not violate the 14th Amendment.

3) Later court cases demonstrated the South was more interested in enforcing the “separate” than the “equal” part of the ruling, and black facilities were often poorly maintained and underfunded when compared to white facilities.

Jim Crow laws (1870s-1960s)

1) System of legalized racial segregation in the American South that sought to empower whites and strip African Americans of their social status.

2) Attempted to establish two separate societies by preventing racial mixing in schools, public transportation, restaurants, movie theaters, and even prevented interracial marriage.

3) This system of discrimination was often perpetuated through custom, violence, and intimidation.