Flashcards unit seven: Reconstruction

Emancipation

The act of freeing enslaved people

John Wilkes Booth

Confederate sympathizer who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln

Andrew Johnson

Became president after Lincoln's assassination. A southern democrat who remained loyal to the union

Reconstruction

The period after the Civil War when the southern states were reorganized and reintegrated into the Union

13th Amendment

Constitutional change that abolished slavery in the United States

10 Percent Plan

President Lincoln's approach to reconstruction, included an oath of loyalty to the United States, required states to accept the end of slavery, encouraged a faster end

Wade-Davis Bill

Strict Reconstruction plan passed by congress (but vetoed by Lincoln), required 50% loyalty, stronger guarantees for African American rights, barred former Confederate leaders from office. Lincoln believed it would slow down reunification, and vetoed.

14th Amendment

Change to the constitution that granted citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the US, including formerly enslaved people. Grants equal protection under the law.

Suffrage

The right to vote in political elections

Enfranchisement

Being given the right to vote

15th Amendment

Change to the constitution that prohibits the federal and state government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude

Freedmen's Bureau

Federal agency established in 1865 to support formerly enslaved people as well as poor white people in the south

Black Codes

Laws passed by Southern states after the Civil War to restrict the rights of African Americans and keep them in a labor economy similar to slavery

Convict Leasing

A system used in the Southern United States after the Civil War in which prisoners (mostly African American men) would labor for private companies, plantations, and industries

Peonage Laws

Under these laws, people who owed money or could not pay fines were forced to work to "pay off" debt, often under harsh conditions

Radical Republicans

A faction of the party that wanted to punish the South for the Civil War and promote full rights for formerly enslaved people

Reconstruction Act of 1867

Major law passed by congress to use federal power to rebuild the South and protect African American rights

Sharecropping

An agricultural system where landowners allowed tenants to farm their land in exchange for crops

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

White supremacist group founded during Reconstruction that used violence and terror to oppose civil rights

Carpetbaggers

Northerners who moved South after the Civil War, perceived as trying to profit from Reconstruction

Scalawags

White Southerners who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party

Segregation

Legal or social separation of people based on race

Jim Crow Laws

State and local laws that enforced racial segregation

Compromise of 1877

Informal deal that ended Reconstruction by withdrawing federal troops from the South in exchange for Rutherford B. Hayes becoming president

Civil Rights Act of 1866

Law declaring all people born in the U.S. (except Native Americans) were citizens and guaranteed equal rights under the law

Redeemers

Southern Democratic politicians who sought to take control from the Republicans in the South after Reconstruction