Chapter 22 Key Terms The American Pageant 16th Edition

Freedmen's Bureau

(1865-1872) created to aid newly emancipated slaves by providing food, clothing, medical care, education, and legal support; its achievements were uneven and depended largely on the quality of local administrators

"10 Percent" Reconstruction Plan (Lincolns Plan)

(1863) introduced by President Lincoln, it proposed that a state be readmitted to the Union once 10 percent of its voters had pledged loyalty to the United States and promised to honor emancipation, reject compact theory, and military Governors would oversee the plan.

Wade-Davis Bill

passed by Congressional Republicans in response to Abraham Lincoln's "10 percent plan," it required that 50 percent of a state's voters pledge allegiance to the Union, and set stronger safeguards for emancipation; reflected divisions between Congress and the President, and between radical and moderate Republicans, over the treatment of the defeated South

Black Codes

(1865-1866) laws passed throughout the South to restrict the rights of emancipated blacks, particularly with respect to negotiating labor contracts; increased Northerners' criticisms of President Andrew Johnson's lenient Reconstruction policies

Pacific Railroad Act

(1862) helped fund the construction of the Union Pacific transcontinental railroad with the use of land grants and government bonds

Civil Rights Bill

(1866) passed over Andrew Johnson's veto, the bill aimed to counteract the Black Codes by conferring citizenship on African Americans and making it a crime to deprive blacks of their rights to sue, testify in court, or hold property

Fourteenth Amendment

(ratified 1868) constitutional amendment that extended civil rights to all born in U.S. and prohibited states from taking away such rights without due process. penalty for violating the amendment was a loss of congressional representation.

Reconstruction Act (Radical Republican Plan)

(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 before gaining readmission to the Union, 50% loyalty oath.

Fifteenth Amendment

(ratified 1870) prohibited states from denying citizens the franchise on account of race; it disappointed feminists who wanted the Amendment to include guarantees for women's suffrage

Ex parte Milligan

(1866) Civil War Era case in which the Supreme Court ruled that military tribunals could not be used to try civilians if civil courts were open

Redeemers

Southern Democratic politicians who sought to wrest control from Republican regimes in the South after Reconstruction

Woman's Loyal League

(1863-1865) women's organization formed to help bring about an end to the Civil War and encourage Congress to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery

Union League

Reconstruction-Era African American organization that worked to educate Southern blacks about civic life, built black schools and churches, and represented African American interests before government and employers; it also campaigned on behalf of Republican candidates and recruited local militias to protect blacks from white intimidation

scalawags

derogatory term for pro-Union Southerners whom Southern Democrats accused of plundering the resources of the South in collusion with Republican governments after the Civil War

carpetbaggers

pejorative used by Southern whites to describe Northern businessmen and politicians who came to the South after the Civil War to work on Reconstruction projects or invest in Southern infrastructure

Ku Klux Klan

an extremist, paramilitary, right-wing secret society founded in the mid-nineteenth century and revived during the 1920s; it was anti-foreign, anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-pacifist, anti-communist, anti-internationalist, anti-evolutionist, and anti-bootlegger, but pro-Anglo-Saxon and pro-Protestant; its members, cloaked in sheets to conceal their identities, terrorized freedmen and sympathetic whites throughout the South after the Civil War; by the 1890s, Klan-style violence and Democratic legislation succeeded in virtually disenfranchising all Southern blacks

Force Acts

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

Tenure of Office Act

(1867) required the President to seek approval from the Senate before removing appointees; when Andrew Johnson removed his secretary of war in violation of the act, he was impeached by the house but remained in office when the Senate fell one vote short of removing him

Seward's Folly

(1867) popular term for Secretary of State William Seward's purchase of Alaska from Russia; the derisive term reflected the anti-expansionist sentiments of most Americans immediately after the Civil War

Oliver O. Howard

Union general known as the "Christian general" because he tried to base his policy decisions on his deep religious piety. He was given charge of the Freedmen's Bureau in 1865, with the mission of integrating the freed slaves into Southern society and politics during the second phase of the Reconstruction Era

Andrew Johnson

a political leader of the nineteenth century. He was elected vice president in 1864 and became president when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. He is one of two presidents to have been impeached; the House of Representatives charged him with illegally dismissing a government official. The Senate tried him, and he was acquitted by only one vote

Thaddeus Stevens

Pennsylvania congressman who led the Radical Republican faction in the House of Representatives during and after the Civil War, advocating for abolition and later, the extension of civil rights to freed blacks. He also called for land redistribution as a means to break the power of the planter elite and provide African Americans with the economic means to sustain their new-found independence

Hiram Revels

U.S. clergyman, educator, and politician: first black senator

Edwin M. Stanton

Secretary of war under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson, he advocated for stronger measures against the South during Reconstruction, particularly after widespread violence against African Americans erupted in the region. In 1868, Johnson removed him in violation of the 1867 Tenure of Office Act, giving pretense for Radical Republicans in the House to impeach him

Benjamin Wade

Radical Republican who opposed slavery. Sponsored the Wade-Davis Bill. Served in the Senate. Opposed Johnson's Reconstruction policies. Would have succeeded Johnson but he was distrusted by moderate Republicans for his favor of high tariffs, cheap labor, and soft-money.

William Seward

Johnson's Secretary of State who engineered the purchase of Alaska from Russia

Racism, Economic Competition

Two Reasons Northerners favored containing blacks in the South during Reconstruction.

Andrew Johnson's Plan for Reconstruction included:

putting ex-Confederate leaders back in power, accepts 13th amendment, nothing to empower freed blacks. hated by Radical Republicans and seen as too lenient.

Reconstruction ended because:

economic depression, Northern and Southern elites worried about a lower class uprising, North and South no longer enemies, increase in government corruption at local and national levels (Grant's administration, Boss Tweed), election of Hayes was a bargain in which reconstruction was ended.

Sharecropping

Former slaves and poor whites during reconstruction would get seed, and tools and a share of the crop they grew. Unfair system that kept freedmen indebted to planter class.