Reconstruction Vocab

The Reconstruction of the civil war, and my work schedule.

Sharecropping

• When landowners provide the land, tools, and supplies

• And the Sharecroppers provide the labor.

• This, somewhat, benefitted both. Most of the crops went to the landowner, and some went to the sharecropper as payment

• It mostly benefitted the landowner though. The sharecroppers never made much money.

Compromise of 1877

• The democrats accepted the election of a new, republican, president

• If in turn, the military troops would be removed from the South.

• This ended the Reconstruction

Impeachment

When a legislative body presses charges upon a public official. (ie. President, Cabinet Member)

This, if true, removes the person from office.

Reconstruction Acts

These laws divided the South into 5 military districts. A US military commander controlled each district

Civil Rights Acts of 1866

• This act provided African Americans with the same rights as white Americans

• Then President Johnson vetoed it

• Then Congress overrode the veto

Radical Republicans

• They were Republicans that wanted the South to be forced into change

• They wanted the Federal Government to be more involved in the Reconstruction

• They wanted African Americans to be treated like people

Freedman’s Bureau

• It was an agency that provided relief for recently freed people, and some poor people in the South

• It was basically a support group created right after the Civil War

Ten Percent Plan

It offered southerners supporting the rebellion, that committed illegal acts, an official pardon.

Due Process

• A government must respect a person’s legal rights before taking them

• A right to the notice of the charges against you

• An the opportunity to be heard

• And the opportunity to defend yourself

• Getting arrested without due process overrides the arrest

Plessy vs. Ferguson

Landmark Supreme Court Case in 1896

• Homer Plessy was arrested when he refused to leave a “whites only” train car in Louisiana

• SCOTUS determined that “separate but equal facilities were legal

• “Separate and unequal”

Jim Crow Laws

Laws that enforced segregation (e.g Separate schools, Separate train cars, and even marriages between white Americans, and anyone with an ethnic background was illegal.)

Segregation

The forced separation of whites and African Americans in public places

Poll Tax

A special tax people had to pay before they could vote. (this discouraged African Americans to vote)

KKK

• Pulaski, TN-Nathan Bedford Forrest

• Secret Society that used violence and terror against African Americans

• Disguised identities, attacked, and sometimes killed African Americans, Republican voters, and public office holders

• Organization dissipated by 1870, but a much more violent version reemerged in 1920.

15th Amendment

• 1870

• Gave African Americans the right to vote

• 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments are known as the Civil Rights Amendments

14th Amendment

• All people born in the US, are US citizens.

• No state can deprive a person of life, liberty, and property without due process of law.

• State laws are subject to review in federal courts

Black Codes

Laws that greatly limited the freedoms of African Americans (men)

• Required African Americans to sign work contracts

• Could be arrested for vagrancy (homelessness) if they could not prove they were employed

• these alarmed many Americans, “If you call this freedom, what do you call slavery?”

Andrew Johnson

• Lincoln’s VP

• Takes over after Lincoln was assassinated

• Southern Democrat

13th Amendment

(January 1865) Make slavery illegal throughout the United States

Things African Americans could do with their new freedom:

• Could legalize marriage

• Women began to work in homes instead of the fields

• TRAVEL- because before they could only travel with the person that “owned them”

• DEMAND political rights

Reconstruction

Bring the Southern states back in the Union, and it guaranteed rights back to former enslaved people.