Civil War/Reconstruction

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