Unit 2: Westward Expansion and Reconstruction

Assimilation

to adapt to the culture of a different group of people

Reconstruction

the period during which the federal government controlled the states that chad seceded from the Union during the Civil War

Radical Republicans

a group of political leaders dedicated to imposing harsh conditions on the states that had seceded 

Freedman’s Bureau

a federal agency created to provide aid for enslaved people who were freed

Black Codes

Laws that restricted African Americans rights and opportunities 

Civil Rights Act of 1866

a law that established federal guarantees of civil rights for all citizens

What was the Civil War about?

the civil war was about slavery

Civil Rights Act of 1875

a law that banned discrimination in pubic facilities and transportation 

Rutherford B Hayes

President with disputed election, to win he agreed to end Reconstruction

Compromise of 1877

agreement to remove slavery from the south

Jim Crow Laws

State laws that passed throughout the south to enforce racial segregation of public facilities

Poll Tax

a tax charged on voters

Grandfather Clause

a law to disqualify black voters by only allowing men whose grandfathers voted before 1866/1877 to vote

Booker T Washington

a pubic leader who encouraged education for blacks and accepted segregation 

13th Amendment 

abolished slavery

14th Amendment

guarantees equal protection under the law

15th Amendment 

gives all adult males the right to vote

Plessy vs Ferguson

Supreme Court ruled that segregation did not violate 14th amendment if there were separate but equal facilities 

Reservations

public lands where Natives were required to live by the federal government

Sitting Bull

a war chief of the Lakota and Sioux

Manifest Destiny

The belief that the US was destined by God’s will to extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific 

Exodusters

Black Americans who left the south to seek a better life in the West

Homestead Act

a law that offered 160 acres of land to anyone willing to live on it for 5 years, buil a home, and grow crops

Indian Boarding Schools/Carlise Schools

Forcing Native Americans to farm and attend in an attempt to assimilate them

Dawes Act

Distributed reservation land to individual Natives to assimilate them to farming, if they lived and worked the land for 25 years they would own it

Indian Wars

the series of conflicts between Natives and the US Army that lasted from the 1850s until the 1890s

Battle of Little Bighorn

battle where Sitting Bull and the Sioux defeated the US Army and Custer

Wounded Knee

The US Army captured the Natives, ending the Indian Wars