GSU History: Colonial Resistance, Civil War, and Reconstruction

Vocabulary flashcards covering key historical terms, legal cases, constitutional amendments, and concepts from colonial opposition to Parliament through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the establishment of segregation.

Sons of Liberty

Patriots and colonists who insisted on no taxation without representation and rejected Parliament's authority.

Mercantilism

An economic policy aiming to maximize a nation's wealth through exports and the accumulation of metals and other resources.

Colonial Assemblies

Legislative bodies in the colonies where colonists elected representatives to speak for constituents and pass laws.

Proclamation for the Suppression of Rebellion and Sedition

A decree issued by the King rejecting the colonists' appeal for backing against Parliament, signaling he would not support them.

Border States

States located between the Confederate States and the Union—including Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri—that stayed with the Union but maintained slavery.

Radical Republicans

A faction within the Union that drove immediate abolition of slavery, fought for civil rights for freed people, and controlled Reconstruction after the Civil War.

Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation

An order issued by Abraham Lincoln in September 1862 stating that Confederate states could keep their slaves if they laid down arms by January 1, 1863, or face total emancipation of all southern slaves.

Emancipation Proclamation

An official decree promising freedom to all slaves in Confederate states not currently held by the Union, putting slavery on a path to extinction in the USA.

New Birth of Freedom

A phrase used by Lincoln after the Emancipation Proclamation to express that slaves were free, liberty had not perished, and the war was now dedicated to guaranteeing freedom.

Thirteenth Amendment

A constitutional amendment passed in 1865 that officially prohibited slavery in the United States.

Presidential Reconstruction

The initial phase of post-Civil War Reconstruction overseen and controlled by President Andrew Johnson.

Fourteenth Amendment

A constitutional amendment that established a national conception of citizenship with civil rights protections against state discrimination.

Radical Reconstruction

The period when radicals in Congress took control of the Reconstruction process to remake the South into a society that recognized political and social equality for all residents.

Fifteenth Amendment

A constitutional amendment that granted Black men the right to vote.

Mississippi Plan

A strategy developed in Mississippi that utilized voter intimidation from groups like the Ku Klux Klan to ensure racists controlled election outcomes.

Compromise of 1877

An agreement in which Tilden agreed to accept Hayes winning the disputed presidential election in exchange for Hayes ending Reconstruction in the South.

Segregation

The legal and social division of races that assigned Black Southerners to a position of inferiority and white Southerners to a position of superiority.

Anti-Miscegenation Laws

A set of laws passed by white lawmakers that made it illegal for people of different races to marry, procreate, or have interracial children.

Pace v. Alabama (1883)

A Supreme Court case ruling that anti-miscegenation laws were valid under the police power of states to regulate their own citizens without violating the Fourteenth Amendment.

Civil Rights Cases (1883)

A collection of Supreme Court cases decided together that ruled state-mandated discrimination did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, restoring white dominance in the South.

Lynching

A tool of white control and intimidation involving acts of violence outside the boundaries of the law that typically resulted in the murder of targeted individuals.

New South

A vision popularized by journalist Henry Grady for an industrializing Southern economy built on freed slave labor rather than agricultural slavery.

Atlanta Compromise Speech

A speech delivered by Booker T. Washington at the Atlanta and Cotton States Exposition encouraging Black people to stay in the South and cooperate with whites in exchange for employment.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

A Supreme Court ruling arising from the arrest of a man who was 1/8 Black in a white railway car, which established the constitutional precedent of 'separate but equal'.