APUSH Chapter 15 Vocabulary

Ten Percent Plan

Lincoln's plan to let a Southern state rejoin the Union once 10% of its voters swore loyalty to the United States and accepted the end of slavery.

Wade-Davis Bill

A stricter Reconstruction plan that required a majority of white men in a Southern state to swear loyalty before it could rejoin the Union.

Black Codes

Laws passed in the South after the Civil War that limited the rights and freedoms of newly freed African Americans.

Freedmen's Bureau

A government agency created to help formerly enslaved people and poor whites with food, jobs, schools, and legal aid after the Civil War.

Civil Rights Act of 1866

A law that declared all people born in the United States (except Native Americans) citizens with equal rights under the law.

Fourteenth Amendment

A constitutional amendment that guaranteed citizenship and equal protection of the laws to everyone born or naturalized in the United States.

Reconstruction Act of 1867

A law that divided the South into military districts and set rules Southern states had to follow to rejoin the Union, including giving Black men the vote.

Fifteenth Amendment

A constitutional amendment that said citizens could not be denied the right to vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

American Woman Suffrage Association

A group that worked for women's right to vote, usually by trying to win it state by state.

National Woman Suffrage Association

A group led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton that pushed for a national constitutional amendment for women's right to vote.

Minor v. Happersett

A Supreme Court case that ruled the Constitution did not already give women the right to vote.

Sharecropping

A farming system where poor farmers, often freedmen, rented land and paid the owner with a share of the crops.

Union League

An organization that urged African Americans to register to vote, supported Republican candidates, and taught about politics in the South.

Scalawags

White Southerners who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party, often seen as traitors by other Southern whites.

Carpetbaggers

Northerners who moved South after the Civil War, some to help rebuild and others hoping to gain money or political power.

Convict leasing

A system where Southern states rented prisoners, mostly Black men, to private companies for labor under harsh conditions.

Civil Rights Act of 1875

A law that tried to guarantee African Americans equal access to public places like hotels, trains, and theaters.

Freedman's Savings and Trust Company

A bank created mainly for formerly enslaved people that later failed, causing many to lose their savings.

Classical liberalism

A belief in limited government, free markets, and individual rights, especially economic freedom and private property.

Laissez faire

The idea that government should interfere as little as possible in the economy and business.

Crédit Mobilier

A scandal in which a fake construction company stole money from the Union Pacific Railroad and bribed members of Congress.

Redemption

The term white Southern Democrats used for taking back control of their state governments and ending Reconstruction reforms.

Ku Klux Klan

A secret white supremacist group that used terror and violence to keep African Americans from voting and gaining rights.

Enforcement Laws

Federal laws that gave the government power to fight the Ku Klux Klan and protect African Americans' voting rights.

Slaughter-House Cases

Supreme Court decisions that limited the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment and weakened federal power to defend Black rights.

U.S. v. Cruikshank

A Supreme Court case that said the federal government could not punish individuals for attacking African Americans, weakening protection of their rights.

Civil Rights Cases

Supreme Court decisions that struck down parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 and allowed private businesses to segregate by race.