APUSH Reconstruction Vocab

10% Plan

Lincoln’s Reconstruction proposal allowing Southern states to rejoin the Union once 10% of voters swore loyalty and accepted emancipation

Wade-Davis Bill

Congressional Reconstruction plan requiring a majority of white Southern men to swear loyalty and guaranteeing Black equality

Andrew Johnson

President after Lincoln who favored lenient Reconstruction and opposed expanded rights for freedpeople

Black Codes

Southern laws designed to restrict African Americans’ freedom and force them into labor systems similar to slavery

Freedmen’s Bureau

Federal agency providing food

Civil Rights Act of 1866

Law granting citizenship and equal civil rights to all persons born in the United States

Fourteenth Amendment

Constitutional amendment granting citizenship and equal protection under the law

Charles Sumner

Radical Republican senator who strongly advocated racial equality and Black civil rights

Thaddeus Stevens

Radical Republican congressman who pushed for harsh Reconstruction and land redistribution

Reconstruction Act of 1867

Law placing Southern states under military rule and requiring new constitutions with Black male suffrage

Ulysses S. Grant

Union general and president who supported Reconstruction and enforced civil rights laws

Fifteenth Amendment

Constitutional amendment prohibiting denial of voting rights based on race or previous servitude

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Women’s rights leader who opposed the Fifteenth Amendment for excluding women from suffrage

Victoria Woodhull

Radical feminist who advocated women’s suffrage and ran for president in 1872

American Woman Suffrage Association

Organization supporting women’s suffrage through state-by-state campaigns and supporting the Fifteenth Amendment

National Woman Suffrage Association

Organization opposing the Fifteenth Amendment and seeking a federal women’s suffrage amendment

Minor v. Happersett

Supreme Court case ruling that citizenship does not guarantee the right to vote

Beecher-Tilton scandal

Public adultery trial involving minister Henry Ward Beecher that reflected changing moral norms

Sharecropping

Agricultural system where freedpeople farmed land in exchange for a share of crops

Robert Smalls

Former enslaved man who became a Union war hero and served in Congress during Reconstruction

Blanche Bruce

First African American to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate

Convict leasing

System in which prisoners were leased to private companies for forced labor

Civil Rights Act of 1875

Law guaranteeing equal access to public accommodations later struck down by the Supreme Court

Classical Liberalism

Political ideology emphasizing limited government

Credit Mobilier

Political scandal involving railroad executives bribing members of Congress

Nathan Bedford Forrest

Former Confederate general and early leader of the Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan

White supremacist organization using violence and intimidation to undermine Reconstruction

Enforcement Laws

Federal laws allowing prosecution of individuals who interfered with civil rights and voting

Slaughter-House Cases

Supreme Court decisions that narrowly interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment and weakened federal protections

Civil Rights Cases

Supreme Court rulings striking down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 and allowing private discriminatio