Enslavement
being owned and controlled by another person
Abolitionist movement
Movement to end slavery
Slave Revolts
Slaves fought back against their enslavers rather than escaping
Underground Railroad
a system of secret routes used by escaping enslaved people to reach freedom
Cotton Industry
The south produced cotton, the north made it into cloth
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850
Law that required all citizens to help catch runaway enslaved people
Uncle Tom's Cabin
a novel published by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852 which portrayed slavery as brutal and immoral
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Book by Harriet Jacobs
Union
The United States; especially the northern states during the Civil War, which remained with the original United States government.
Confederacy
the southern states that seceded from the United States in 1861
Sectionalism
Loyalty to one's own region of the country, rather than to the nation as a whole
States' Rights
the rights and powers held by individual US states rather than by the federal government.
Tariff
A tax on imported goods
Election of 1860
Lincoln elected President
Fort Sumter
Federal fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina; the confederate attack on the fort marked the start of the Civil War
Secession
the formal withdrawal of a state from the Union
Emancipation Proclamation
Issued by abraham lincoln on september 22, 1862 it declared that all slaves in the confederate states would be free
Civil War Amendment
the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution
Reconstruction
the period after the Civil War in the United States when the southern states were reorganized and reintegrated into the Union
Freedmen's Bureau
Organization run by the army to care for and protect southern Blacks after the Civil War
Poll Taxes
required citizens of a state to pay a special tax in order to vote
Literacy Tests
tests requiring reading or comprehension skills as a qualification for voting
Segregation
Separation of people based on racial, ethnic, or other differences
Jim Crow Laws/Black Codes
Laws intended to keep blacks segregated and treated poorly after the Civil War.
Ku Klux Klan
White supremacy organization that intimidated blacks out of their newly found liberties
Plessy v. Ferguson
a 1896 Supreme Court decision which legalized state ordered segregation so long as the facilities for blacks and whites were equal
Impeachment
A formal document charging a public official with misconduct in office
HBCUs
colleges founded primarily for education of African-Americans, although their charters were not exclusionary
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.
Nat Turner
Leader of a slave rebellion in 1831 in Virginia.
Frederick Douglass
Escaped slave and great black abolitionist who fought to end slavery through political action
Harriet Tubman
Former slave who helped slaves escape on the Underground Railroad
Abraham Lincoln
16th President of the United States saved the Union during the Civil War and emancipated the slaves; was assassinated by Booth (1809-1865)
Andrew Johnson
17th President of the United States, the first U.S. president to be impeached, he survived the Senate removal by only one vote.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin
Dred Scott
United States slave who sued for liberty after living in a non-slave state