Second Test Key terms

Question 1

Freedmen’s Bureau

Answer 1

agency established by Congress in March 1865 to attempt to establish a working free labor system
Goals:
Establish schools
Provide aid to the poor and aged
Settle disputes btwn whites and blacks and among the freedpeople
Secure for former slaves and white Unionists equal treatment before courts
Bureau lasted from 1865-1870

Question 2

sharecropping

Answer 2

• Initially arose as a compromise btwn blacks’ desire for land and planters’ demand for labor discipline
• Allowed each black family to rent a part of a plantation w/crop divided btwn worker and owner at the end of the year
• Guaranteed planters a stable resident labor force
• Former slaves preferred it to gang labor bec it offered prospect of working w/out day-to-day white supervision
• As years went on, sharecropping became more and more oppressive

Question 3

crop-lien system

Answer 3

The crop-lien system was a credit system that became widely used by cotton farmers in the United States in the South from the 1860s to the 1930s. Sharecroppers and tenant farmers who did not own the land they worked obtained supplies and food on credit from local merchants. The merchants held a lien on the cotton crop and the merchants and landowners were the first ones paid from its sale. What was left over went to the farmer.

Question 4

Black Codes

Answer 4

laws passed by the new southern governments that attempted to regulate the lives of former slaves. Granted blacks certain rights, such as legalized marriage, ownership of property, and limited access to the courts. Denied them rights to testify against whites, to serve on juries or in state militias or to vote. Declared that those who failed to sign yearly labor contracts could be arrested and hired out to white landowners.

Question 5

Civil Rights Bill of 1866

Answer 5

Proposed by Senator Lyman Trumbull that reflected moderates’ belief that Johnson’s policy required modification. Defined all persons born in the US as citizens; spelled out rights they were to enjoy w/out regard to race. No state could deprive any citizen of right to make contracts, bring lawsuits, or enjoy equal protection of one’s person and property.

Question 6

14th Amendment

Answer 6

Placed in the Constitution the principle of citizenship for all persons born in the US; empowered federal govt to protect the rights of all Americans. Prohibited the states from abridging “privileges and immunities” of citizens or denying them the “equal protection of the law.” Opened the door for future Congresses and federal courts to breath meaning into guarantee of legal equality.

Question 7

Reconstruction Act

Answer 7

Adopted over Johnson’s veto, which temporarily divided the South into 5 military districts and called for the creation of new state govts, w/black men given the right to vote. Started the period of Radical Reconstruction

Question 8

15th Amendment

Answer 8

Result of Grant’s election (Election of 1868); prohibited federal and state govts from denying any citizen the right to vote because of race. Marked culmination of four decades of abolitionist agitation.

Question 9

Womens Rights

Answer 9

advocated encountered limits of Reconstruction commitment to equality. Saw Reconstruction as moment to claim its own emancipation

Question 10

Carpetbaggers

Answer 10

Reconstruction officials (northerners) who made their homes in the South after the war; implied that they packed all their belongings and left homes in order to reap the spoils of office in the South

Question 11

Scalawags

Answer 11

white Republicans born in the South who were considered traitors by former Confederates

Question 12

Klu Klux Klan

Answer 12

Served as military arm of the Democratic Party in the South

Terrorist organization

Question 13

Colfax Massacre

Answer 13

when approximately 150 black men were murdered by white Southern Democrats. The bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the Reconstruction era

Question 14

Enforcement acts

Answer 14

adopted by Congress, outlawing terrorist societies and allowing the president to use the army against him. Laws continued the expansion of national authority during Reconstruction.

Question 15

Civil rights act of 1875

Answer 15

was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction Erain response to civil rights violations to African Americans, “to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights”, giving them equal treatment in public accommodations, public transportation, and to prohibit exclusion from jury service.

Question 16

Slaughterhouse Cases

Answer 16

ruled that the 14th Amendment had not altered traditional federalism. Declared that most rights of citizens remained under state control.

Question 17

Redeemers

Answer 17

victorious Democrats from Southern states that claimed to have “redeemed” the white South from corruption, misgovernment, and northern and black control

Question 18

Bargain of 1877

Answer 18

The Compromise of 1877 was a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election. It resulted in the United States federal government pulling the last troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era.

Question 19

Great upheaval of 1886

Answer 19

wave of strikes and labor protests that touched the nation in 1886 in hopes of creating the Statue of Liberty

Question 20

“Trusts”

Answer 20

established by businesses; legal devices whereby affairs of several rival companies were managed by a single director (proved to be short lived)

Question 21

Vertical Integration

Answer 21

the combination in one company of two or more stages of production normally operated by separate companies.

Question 22

Captains of industry

Answer 22

one viewpoint which described the business techniques employed by Carnegie and Rockefeller (positive viewpoint, energy and vision pushed the economy forward)

Question 23

Robber barons

Answer 23

negative viewpoint of Carnegie and Rockefeller; wielded power w/out any accountability in an unregulated marketplace

Question 24

Bonanza farms

Answer 24

covered trans-Mississippi West where small farmers became oriented to national and international markets; specialized in production of single crop for sale in faraway places

Question 25

Dawes Act

Answer 25

crucial step in attacking “tribalism;” broke up the land of nearly all tribes into small parcels to be distributed to Indian families, with the remainder auctioned off to white purchases

Question 26

Ghost Dance

Answer 26

religious revitalization campaign, fortelling a day when whites disappear, the buffalo would return, and Indians could once again practice their customs; led to Wounded Knee massacre

Question 27

Greenbacks

Answer 27

paper money issued by the Union during the Civil War

Question 28

Interstate Commerce Commission

Answer 28

(ICC), established by Congress to ensure that the rates railroads charged farmers and merchants to transport their goods were “reasonable” and did not offer more favorable treatment to some shippers over others

Question 29

Sherman Antitrust Act

Answer 29

passed by Congress which banned all combinations and practices that restrained free trade; language was so vague that act proved almost impossible to enforce

Question 30

Patrons of Husbandry

Answer 30

critics of the railroads and railroad companies which moved to establish cooperatives for storing and marketing farm output in the hope of forcing carriers “to take produce at a fair price”

Question 31

Social Darwinism

Answer 31

the belief that evolution was a natural process in human society as in nature, and the govt must not interfere