APUSH Unit 6 Key Terms: Insights into the Civil War and Its Aftermath

Fort Sumter

(April, 1861) a South Carolina location where Confederate forces fired the first shots of the Civil War, after Union forces attempted to provision the fort

Border States

(1861-1865) 5 slaves states that did not secede and stayed in the union, Lincoln did not pressure the abolition of slavery on to these states

writ of habeas corpus

a petition requiring law enforcement officers to present detained individuals before the court to examine the legality of the arrest; protects individuals from arbitrary state action; suspended by Lincoln during the Civil War

Homestead Act

(1862) federal that sold settlers 160 acres of land for about $30 if they lived on it for 5 years and improved it; the act helped make land more accessible to many westward-moving settlers

Jefferson Davis

"president" of the Confederate States of America (1861-1865)

Emancipation Proclamation

(1863)eclared all slaves in rebelling states to be free but did not affect slavery in non-rebelling Border States; it was a military tactic uses by Lincoln to add a moral component to the North's reason on fighting

Gettysburg Address

(1863) Abraham Lincoln's oft-quoted speech, delivered at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg battlefield; in the address, Lincoln framed the war as a means to uphold the values of liberty

Robert E. Lee

(1807-1870) a general for the Confederacy; defeated at Gettysburg and fully surrendered (April 19, 1865)

Thirtheenth Amendment

(1865) a constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude; all former slave states were required to ratify the amendment prior to gaining reentry into the union

Freedmen's Bureau

(1865-1872) created to aid newly emancipated slaves by providing food, clothing, medical care, education, and legal support

Black Codes

(1865-1866) laws passed throughout the South to restrict the rights of emancipated blacks, particularly with respect to negotiating labor contracts

Fourteeth Amendment

a constitutional amendment giving full rights of citizenship to all people born or naturalized in America; did not include natives (equality under the law)

Reconstruction Act

(1867) passed by the newly elected Republican Congress, it divided the South into five military districts, disenfranchised former confederates, and required that Southern states both ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and write state constitutions guaranteeing freedmen the franchise

Fifteenth Amendment

(1870) constitutional amendment that guaranteed voting rights regardless of race or previous condition of servitude; it did not include women - only men

Force Acts

(1870-1871) passed by Congress following a wave of KKK violence, the acts banned clan membership, prohibited the use of intimidation to prevent blacks from voting, and gave the U.S. military authority to enforce the acts

New South

the rise of the South after the Civil War which would no longer be dependent on now-outlawed slave labor or predominantly upon the raising of cotton, but rather a South which was also industrialized and part of a modern national economy

Radical Republicanism

(1855-1877) a political group that believed the South should be harshly punished

Sharecropping

a system used on southern farms after the Civil War in which farmers worked land owned by someone else in return for a small portion of the crops

Amnesty Act

(1872) United States federal law that removed voting restrictions and office-holding disqualification against most of the secessionists who rebelled in the American Civil War, except for some 500 military leaders of the Confederacy

Systematic Racism

concept that racism is not just practiced by specific people, but is a phenomenon that is systematic, shaped everyday social relations

Internalized Racism

private manifestation of racism that resides inside an individual; one who believes the stereotypes about their own race

White Privilege

advantages possessed by white people on the basis of their race in a society characterized by racial inequality and injustice