APUSH Reconstruction

Freedmen’s Bureau

A federal agency established in 1865 to help formerly enslaved people and poor whites in the South by providing food, housing, medical aid, and establishing schools.

10% Plan

 President Lincoln's lenient plan for reconstruction; it allowed a southern state to rejoin the Union once 10% of its voters swore an oath of loyalty and agreed to abolish slavery.

Wade-Davis Bill

A much harsher plan proposed by Radical Republicans requiring 50% of voters to take an ironclad oath of loyalty. Lincoln vetoed it, favoring a quicker reconciliation.

Andrew Johnson

 The 17th president who took over after Lincoln's assassination. A southern democrat, he clashed bitterly with Congress over Reconstruction, leading to his impeachment.

Black Codes

Discriminatory laws passed by southern states immediately after the war to restrict the freedom of African Americans and compel them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt.

Tenure of Office Act

A law forbidding the president from removing certain officials without senates approval. Johnson broke this by firing his Secretary of War, which triggered his impeachment.

13th amendment

Abolished SLavery

14th Amendment

Granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S and guaranteed equal protection under the law

15th amendment

Prohibited the government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Radical Republicans (anti-Lincoln)

A faction of the Republican Party that pushed for total abolition, civil rights for freedmen, and harsh punishment for former Confederates.

Scalawags

A derogatory term for white southerners who supported the republican party and Reconstruction policies.

Carpetbaggers

A derogatory term for Northerners who moved to the South after the war, often seeking economic opportunity or political office

Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce

the first two African Americans to serve in the U.S. Senate (representing Mississippi

Fisk University

 a historically black university founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee, symbolizing the push for higher education among freedmen

Civil Rights Act of 1875

A law that prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations (like hotels and theaters); it was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Sharecropping

A system where farmers work land owned by someone else in return for a share of the crops. It often trapsfamilies in a cycle of permanent debt.

Tenant farming

 similar to sharecropping, but the farmer usually owns their own tools/animals and pays rent in cash or crops, giving them slightly more independence.

Crop-Lien Farming

a credit system where farmers borrowed money against their future harvests to buy supplies, often resulting in high interest rates and deep poverty.

U.S Grant

Ulysses S. Grant is primarily known as the commanding Union General who won the American Civil War, accepting Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in 1865. A tenacious strategist, he later served as the 18th U.S. President (1869–1877), focusing on Reconstruction, protecting African American citizenship rights, and fighting the Ku Klux Klan.

Credit Mobilier

 a major scandal involving a construction company that overcharged the Union Pacific Railroad and bribed high-ranking republican politicians.

Panic of 1873

 A severe economic depression triggered by railroad failures and bank collapses, which distracted the North from reconstruction efforts.

National Greenback Party

a political party that campaigned for the issuance of paper money (greenbacks) to help farmers and debtors pay off loans more easily.

Seward’s Folly

the nickname for Secretary of State William Seward's 1867 purchase of Alaska from Russia; initially mocked, it later proved to be a massive resource win.

KKK

a white supremacist terrorist organization that used violence and intimidation to prevent African Americans (politicians) from voting or exercising their rights.

Enforcement Acts

three bills passed by Congress to protect black voters and allowed the federal government to use the military against the KKK.

Compromise of 1877

An informal deal that settled the disputed 1876 election. Rutherford B. Hayes became president in exchange for removing federal troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction.

Redeemers/ Bourbons

southern democrats who sought to oust republican government and redeem the South by returning it to white-dominated rule.

Henry Grady/ The New South

Grady was a journalist who promoted the idea of a new South that would move away from plantations and towards industrialization and diverse farming.

Convict lease System

 a system where southern states leased prisoners (mostly black men) to private companies for forced labor, often in brutal conditions.

Jim Crow

A system of state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the South from the end of Reconstruction until the 1960s.

Plessy v. Furguson

the 1896 Supreme Court case that ruled separate but equal facilities were constitutional, legalizing segregation for decades, (separate but equal) until Brown v. Board of Education.

Homestead Act

granted 160 acres of public land to any citizen who lived on and farmed it for five years, encouraging western settlement.

Morrill Land Grant Act

 Provided federal land to states to establish colleges specializing in agriculture and mechanical arts ( the origin of many state universities).

Pacific Railway Act

 authorized the construction of the transcontinental railroad by providing land grants and subsidies to the union pacific a central pacific companies