Unit Two Study Guide: Reconstruction, Westward Expansion, and Native Americans

Vocabulary flashcards based on the Unit Two Study Guide covering Reconstruction, Westward Expansion, and Native American history.

Lincoln and Johnson's Plans for Reconstruction

Lenient plans towards confederate soldiers and citizens, contrasting with the Radical Republicans who wanted a strict response to fully reconstruct the south.

Freedmen's Bureau

An agency created to distribute food and clothing, open schools and hospitals, find new homes, legalize marriages, and negotiate labor contracts for refugees, freedmen, and poor whites in the south.

Black Codes

Individual state-level laws created to state what black people could and could not do, designed to maintain a labor supply.

13th Amendment

The constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

14th Amendment

The constitutional amendment that stated all citizens were equal under the law.

15th Amendment

The constitutional amendment that allowed freedmen to vote.

Sharecropping

A cycle between white landowners and black laborers where landowners told laborers they owed more than they actually did, creating a cycle of never-ending debt to make southern land profitable again.

Tenure of Office Act

A law passed by Congress to protect Radical Republicans that they knew President Johnson might break, which Congress used in an attempt to impeach him.

Southern Republican Voters

The political groups in the South who voted Republican, consisting of scalawags, carpetbaggers, and freedmen.

KKK (Ku Klux Klan)

An organization that wanted to terrorize and scare scalawags and freedmen into not voting Republican, desiring to keep the old social order and restore the South to how it used to be.

Grant's Presidency

A presidential administration widely viewed as corrupt due to numerous scandals and filling positions with unnecessary individuals.

Election of 1876

A presidential election in which Tilden won the popular vote but fell one vote short of the required electoral vote count.

Compromise of 1877

A promise that Tilden would be president if Reconstruction ended, resulting in troops being pulled, no new laws being made, and a lack of attention to African Americans' struggles in the South.

Homestead Act

Legislation that drove mass migration of hundreds of thousands of Americans to permanently settle and develop land in the West, with the condition that the government would take the land away if settlers failed after altering it.

Dawes Act

An effort to "Americanize" Native Americans that allowed the federal government to steal an additional 90 million acres of land and sell it to white settlers.

Indian Assimilation Schools

Schools where Native American children were sent in the late 1800s to teach them English, make them more like Americans, and strip away their culture and native language.

Wounded Knee

A historic event marking the end of Native American resistance and the old Native American way of life, exposing how Americans treated Native Americans.