APUSH chapter 15

Homestead Act

Law that gave settlers 160 acres of free western land if they improved and lived on it for five years, encouraging westward expansion.

Greenbacks

Paper money issued by the Union during the Civil War; not backed by gold or silver, causing controversy over inflation and value.

Copperheads

Northern Democrats who opposed the Civil War and wanted an immediate peace settlement with the Confederacy.

Ex Parte Milligan

Supreme Court case ruling that civilians cannot be tried by military courts when civil courts are open.

Emancipation Proclamation

Lincoln’s executive order declaring enslaved people in Confederate-controlled areas free, transforming the war into a fight against slavery.

Jefferson Davis

President of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War.

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant

Union general who led the North to victory and later became U.S. president.

Robert E. Lee

Leading Confederate general, known for commanding the Army of Northern Virginia.

King Cotton Diplomacy

Confederate strategy to use cotton exports to pressure Britain and France into supporting the South; it failed.

Gettysburg Address

Lincoln’s short speech honoring fallen soldiers and redefining the war as a struggle for freedom, equality, and national unity.

13th Amendment

Abolished slavery in the United States.

14th Amendment

Granted citizenship to all people born in the U.S. and guaranteed equal protection under the law.

15th Amendment

Prohibited denying voting rights based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

President Andrew Johnson

Lincoln’s successor who favored lenient Reconstruction and often clashed with Congress; first president to be impeached.

Scalawags

White Southerners who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party.

Carpetbaggers

Northerners who moved South after the war, often to participate in Reconstruction governments or seek economic opportunities.

Credit Mobilier

A major corruption scandal involving Union Pacific Railroad executives who created a fake construction company to steal government money.

Compromise of 1877

Deal that ended Reconstruction: Republicans got the presidency (Hayes) and federal troops were removed from the South.

Sharecropping

Farming system where freedmen or poor whites rented land in exchange for a share of the crop, often keeping them in long-term debt.

Jim Crow

System of racial segregation laws in the South that enforced discrimination in public and private life.

Black Codes

Southern laws passed after the Civil War to restrict the rights and freedoms of formerly enslaved people.