Chapter 17 Vocab Flashcards
Freedmen’s Bureau
Reconstruction agency established in 1865 to protect the legal rights of former slaves and to assist with their education, jobs, healthcare, and landowning.
John Wilkes Booth
1838?-1865) He assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at the Ford’s Theater on April 4,1865. He was pursued to Virginia and killed.
Andrew Johnson
(1808-1875) President Abraham Lincoln’s vice president. He was elevated to the presidency after Lincoln’s assassination. In order to restore the Union after the Civil War, he issued an amnesty proclamation and required former Confederate states to ratify the 13th Amendment. He fought Radical Republicans in Congress over whether he or Congress had the authority to restore states rights to the former Confederate states. This fight weakened both his political and public support. In 1868, the Radical Republicans attempted to impeach Johnson but fell short on the required number of votes needed to remove him from office.
“black codes”
Laws passed in southern states to restrict the rights of former slaves; to combat the codes, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment and set up military governments in southern states that refused to ratify the amendment.
Thaddeus Stevens
(1792-1868) As one of the leaders of the Radical Republicans, he argued that the former Confederate states should be viewed as conquered provinces, which were subject to the demand of the conquerors. He believed that all of southern society needed to be changed, and he supported the abolition of slavery and racial equality.
Fourteenth Amendment
(1868) Guaranteed rights of citizenship to former slaves, in words similar to the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
Fifteenth Amendment
This amendment forbids states to deny any person the right to vote on grounds of “race, color or previous condition of servitude.” Former Confederate states were required to ratify this amendment before they could be readmitted to the Union.
“carpetbaggers”
Northern emigrants who participated in the Republican governments of the reconstructed South.
greenbacks
Paper money issued during the Civil War. After the war ended, a debate emerged on whether or not to remove the paper currency from circulation and revert back to hard money currency (gold coins). Opponents of hard-money feared that eliminating the greenbacks would shrink the money supply, which would lower crop prices and make it more difficult to repay long-term debts. President Ulysses S. Grant, as well as hard-currency advocates, believed that gold coins were morally preferable to paper currency.
Crédit Mobilier scandal
Construction company guilt of massive overcharges for building the Union Pacific Railroad were exposed; high officials of the Ulysses S. Grant administration were implicated but never charged.
Horace Greeley
(1811-1872) In reaction to Radical Reconstruction and corruption in President Ulysses S. Grant’s administration, a group of Republicans broke from the part to form the Liberal Republicans. In 1872, the Liberal Republicans chose Horace Greeley as their presidential candidate who ran on a platform of favoring cicil service reform and condemning the Republican’s Reconstruction Party.
