Chapter 12 Flashcards
Reconstruction
- period during which United States began to rebuild after the Civil War
- also the process used to readmit the Confederate states
Radical Republicans
- wanted to destroy the political power of former slaveholders
- wanted African Americans to be given full citizenship and the right to vote
Thaddeus Stevens
- leader of the Radical Republicans
- hated slavery and white Southerners
Wade-Davis Bill
Congress should be in charge of Reconstruction, not the president
Freedman’s Bureau
helped African Americans and poor whites by distributing clothing an food
Fourteenth Amendment
all persons born or naturalized in the United States were citizens and had equal protection of the law
Civil Rights Act of 1866
granted citizenship and equal protection under law to African Americans
Reconstruction Act of 1867
abolished governments formed in the former Confederate states, divided the states into five military districts and set up requirements for readmission
Fifteenth Amendment
no one can be kept from voting because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude
Enforcement Act of 1870
protected the rights of American Americans, gave federal government power to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment
impeach
formally charge a president with misconduct in office
scalawag
white Southerners who joined the Republican Party, name given by Democrats
carpetbaggers
Northerners who moved to the South after the Civil War
Hiram Revels
first African American senator
sharecropping
system in which African Americans or poor whites were given sections of land and gave a share of his crop to the landowner
tenant farming
system in which a person rented part of a land and kept all his harvests
panic of 1873
series of financial failures when Cooke invested heavily in railroads and didn’t have enough investors to buy his shares
redemption
Democrat’s return to power in the South
Election of 1876
- Rutherford Hayes (Republican)
- Samuel Tilden (Democratic): helped clean up the graft that flourished in NY under Tweed Ring
Compromise of 1877
Democrats agreed to accept Hayes if
- withdrawal of federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina
- federal money to build a railroad from Texas to west coast and improve Southern rivers, harbors, bridges
- appoint a conservative Southerner to cabinet
home rule
ability to run state governments without federal intervention; goal of Democrats
