Chapter 22 - The Ordeal of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 Flashcards
Reconstruction
This was the effort to have peace between the North and South after the Civil War finished, and also how to rebuild society again.
Exodusters
African Americans leaving their former masters to work in towns/cities. Usually it was whole communities that moved together.
African Methodist Episcopal Church
This church quadrupled in size after emancipation, and became one of the churches that gave black community its life, and also gave rise to other societies that helped protect the new freedoms that were won.
American Missionary Association
This association sent white women to be teachers and help the African Americans build a stable education for the South.
Freedmen’s Bureau
This was created to provide food, clothing, medicine, and education to freedmen and white refugees.
General Oliver O. Howard
He was the man who was in charge of the Freedmen’s Bureau. He was a Union general, and eventually became president of Howard University.
Andrew Johnson
He was the President of the United States, and he tried to kill the Freedmen’s Bureau because he saw it as meddlesome and trying to usurp the white dominance (he was a white supremacist).
Lincoln’s “10 percent plan”
This declared that a state could be readmitted into the US if when they voted in the Presidential Election and 10%
Wade-Davis Bill
Required 50% of state voters take an oath of allegiance and had stronger safeguards for emancipation. Put into place with the fear that slavery would happen again.
Radical Republicans
Group that believed that the South should pay for its sins. They wanted to uproot its social structure, punish the haughty planters, and protect the newly emancipated blacks.
Black Codes
These were put into place to regulate the rights of emancipated blacks. They aimed to ensure a stable and subservient labor force, restore the pre-emancipation race relations, and put awful burdens on freed blacks.
Labor Contracts
Contract that committed blacks to work for the same employer for one year with awful wages.
Sharecropping
When a emancipated slave works for his master after being freed, and is eventually trapped in that master’s net for the rest of their lives.
Debt Peonage
When a black worker couldn’t pay back his debt so he was forced to work again for another year.
Civil Rights Bill
Conferred on blacks the privilege of American citizenship and struck at the Black Codes.
“Andy Veto”
What the president (Andrew Johnson) was called after he vetoed the Civil Rights Bill. He was overruled by Congress later.
Fourteenth Amendment
Conferred civil rights (including citizenship but excluding franchise), reduced representation of a state in Congress and Electoral college if it denied blacks to vote, dismissed confederates in office who had supported slavery, guaranteed federal debt.
Charles Sumner
The man who was caned on the Senate floor. After he recovered, he led the radicals in the Senate, and labored for black freedom and racial equality.
Thaddeus Stevens
Most powerful radical, who defended runaway slaves in court and was buried in a Black Cemetery.
Joint Committee on Reconstruction
House and Senate combined to help fight for African American rights.
Moderate Republicans
Republicans that believed the Southern States should be readmitted to the union as simply as possible.
Reconstruction Act
This legislation divided the south into five military districts, each commanded by a union general and policed by blue clad soldiers, about 20 thousand all told.
Fifteenth Amendment
It said that every man had the right to vote, despite race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Military Reconstruction
The Supreme Court ruled that military tribunals could not try civilians in areas where the civil courts were open. The south was forced into equality by the North and they couldn’t get rid of that leader unless they ratified the 14th amendment and guaranteed universal male suffrage in their state constitution.
Redeemers
Democratic regimes that reverted the military back to democratic tactics
Home Rule
Regimes that reverted back to democratic tactics after the North left their states.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Women’s rights activist that worked wholeheartedly for black emancipation and the right to vote for women and black people.
Susan B. Anthony
Another woman’s rights activist that worked with Stanton. She got signatures (400000) to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery.
Woman’s Loyal League
A group organized by women that gathered 400,000 signatures on petitions asking for the constitution to pass an amendment prohibiting slavery.
Fourteenth Amendment
Defined national citizenship for men, giving them the right to vote.
Union League
A pro Union organization based in the north and organized by Southern Black men. Turned into a network of political clubs that educated members in civic duties and campaigned for republican candidates.
Suffrage
The right to vote in political elections.
Hiram Revels
A black senator that served in Washington DC.
Blanche K. Bruce
A black senator that served in Washington DC.
Scalawags
Southerners (former Unionists) who were allies with freedmen.
Carpetbaggers
(Supposedly) Sleazy Northerners who were seeking personal profit. (Actually just allies with freedmen.)
Ku Klux Klan
An extremist group formed by radical southerners founded in 1866. They cloaked themselves (and sometimes their horses) in white sheets to mask their identities.
Force Acts
Federal troops were now allowed to stamp out the “lash law”. This act was passed in response to the Klu Klux Klan.
Disfranchise
This tactic to undermine blacks freedom used trickery, fraud, and intimidation to achieve what they wanted. Literacy tests kept blacks from voting and to empower whites.
Ben Wade
Would have been Johnson’s successor. He was a radical republican and president of the Senate.
Tenure of Office Act
Required that the president secured the consent of the Senate before he could remove his appointees once they had been approved by the body.
Edwin Stanton
Secretly served as a spy and informer to the radicals. Held position as Secretary of War.
Benjamin F. Butler
A house prosecutor in the Johnson case who was trying to build a case for his impeachment.
William Seward
Ardent expansionist who signed a treaty with Russia that gave Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million.
