Chapter 22 Vocabulary

Question 1

Mutual aid societies

Answer 1

Nonprofit organization designed to provide their members with financial and social benefits, often including medical aid, life insurance, funeral costs, and disaster relief.

Question 2

Confiscation

Answer 2

Legal government seizure of private property without compensation.

Question 3

Pocket veto

Answer 3

The presidential act of blocking a congressionally passed law not by direct veto but by simply refusing to sign it at the end of the session. (A president can pocket veto a bill within ten days of the session’s end or after.)

Question 4

Peonage

Answer 4

A system in which debaters are held in a servitude, to labor for their creditors.

Question 5

Sharecropper

Answer 5

And agricultural system in which a tenant receives land, tools, and seed on credit and pledges in return a share of the crop to the creditor.

Question 6

Scalawag

Answer 6

Derogatory term for pro-Union Southerners whom Southern Democrats accused of plundering the resources of the South in collusion with Republican governments after the Civil War.

Question 7

Carpetbagger

Answer 7

Derogatory term used by Southern whites to describe Northern businessmen and politicians who came to the South after the Civil War to work on Reconstruction projects or invest in Southern infrastructure.

Question 8

Andrew Johnson

Answer 8

Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 – July 31, 1875) was the 17th President of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. Johnson became president as he was vice president at the time of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. A Democrat who ran with Lincoln on the National Union ticket, Johnson came to office as the Civil War concluded. The new president favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union. His plans did not give protection to the former slaves, and he came into conflict with the Republican-dominated Congress, culminating in his impeachment by the House of Representatives. The first American president to be impeached, he was acquitted in the Senate by one vote.

Question 9

William Seward

Answer 9

William Henry Seward (May 16, 1801 – October 10, 1872) was United States Secretary of State from 1861 to 1869, and also served as Governor of New York and United States Senator. A determined opponent of the spread of slavery in the years leading up to the American Civil War, he was a dominant figure in the Republican Party in its formative years. Although regarded as the leading contender for the party’s presidential nomination in 1860, he was defeated by Abraham Lincoln.

Question 10

Civil Disabilities

Answer 10

Legally imposed restrictions of a person’s civil rights or liberties.