AP US Unit 5 Vocab
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147 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Election of 1848 | election between Lewis Cass (Democrat), Martin Van Buren (running with the Free Soil Party (Barnburners and Liberty Party)), and Whig Zachary Taylor; Free Soil Party took votes from Cass; Zachary Taylor won |
| Gold Rush | occurred during the years 1849 - 1860 in California; many people went to California because of this |
| Popular Sovereignty | referred to leaving the slavery debate to the states; letting them vote on the issue; caused problems (in the KS-NE Act, for example) |
| Compromise of 1850 | compromise negotiated mainly by Stephen Douglas; Fugitive Slave Law enforced; Utah and New Mexico Territories created; California admitted as a free state; abolished slave trade in D.C.; Settled Texas claims to NM territory; opposed by Zachary Taylor, but he died in office; Millard Fillmore replaced him |
| Stephen A. Douglas | a senator from Illinois; negotiated Compromise of 1850 and was behind the KS-NE Act; debated Lincoln in a series of debates |
| Millard Fillmore | VP of Zachary Taylor; became President after Zachary Taylor died; favored Compromise of 1850 |
| Fugitive Slave Act | amended as a part of the Compromise of 1850; employed people called "commissioners" by the federal government to catch "fugitive" slaves; also made it illegal to try to help them |
| Crop value per slave | refers to how many crops a slave could grow relative to the cost of the slave (?) |
| Antebellum plantation culture | refers to the relations between masters and slaves on plantations; treatment of slaves varied from master to master, but slaves were not usually close to their masters or their families and were not treated very well, either (?) |
| Denmark Vesey (1822) | African American slave brought to the United States from the Caribbean of Coromantee background. After purchasing his freedom, he planned what would have been one of the largest slave rebellions in the United States. Word of the plans was leaked, and at Charleston, South Carolina, authorities arrested the plot's leaders before the uprising could begin. Vesey and others were tried, convicted and executed. |
| Nat Turner (1831) | led a slave rebellion in 1831; occurred in Southampton County, VA; 55 - 65 white men killed |
| Gradualism | belief in or the policy of advancing toward a goal by gradual, often slow stages; some abolitionists wanted to use this philosophy to get rid of slavery (proposed by more moderate abolitionists) |
| Immediate Emancipation | the belief in the instant abolition of slaves; supported strongly by people like William Lloyd Garrison (considered more extreme) |
| Panic of 1857 | a financial panic in the United States caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy; first worldwide economic crisis; failure of Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company and ruling of Dred Scott v. Sanford Case led to this crisis |
| Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin | a written in 1852 that depicted slaves as human beings; characters dramatized and somewhat unrealistic, but still depicted slaves as humans; contributed to anti-slavery sentiments |
| Clayton-Bulwer Treaty | treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom, negotiated in 1850 by John M. Clayton and Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, later Lord Dalling. It was negotiated in response to attempts to build the Nicaragua Canal, a canal in Nicaragua that would connect the Pacific and the Atlantic; stated that should a canal be built, the two countries would share it |
| Election of 1852 | election between Cass, Buchanan, and Douglas for the Democrats; Franklin Pierce emerges as a darkhorse Democrat; "Conscience Whigs" vs "Cotton Whigs"; eventually nominate Winfield Scott for Whig party; Pierce wins |
| Gadsden Purchase | a land purchase that extended the land at the south of Alabama and New Mexico; opened possibility of Southern Continental Railroad; negotiated in 1853 |
| Ostend Manifesto | a declaration (1854) issued from Ostend, Belgium, by the U.S. ministers to England, France, and Spain, stating that the U.S. would be justified in seizing Cuba if Spain did not sell it to the U.S.; became very unpopular once people found out about it. (North and Europe outraged) |
| Commodore Matthew Perry | the military officer who opened doors to Japan by sailing there with warships and refusing to leave until they decided to open up to the rest of the world |
| Townsend Harris | first American ambassador to Japan; created namesake treaty that favored visa status for Japanese students and opened ports to U.S. in Japan |
| Kansas-Nebraska Act | occurred in 1854; split KS and NE; repealed 36o 30' line; slavery question left to popular sovereignty; to try to get South on board with northern transcontinental railroad; increased sectional tensions; Bloody Kansas revolts resulted in around 200 dead; negotiated largely by Stephen Douglas |
| Know-Nothing (American) Party | a secretive political party; against immigration and Catholics; popular in South as well as North; 1854 midterm successes; Leonard Jerome of Rochester, NY was the leader of them |
| Nativist | one who favors the interests of certain established inhabitants of an area or nation as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants. |
| Free-Soilers | a political party that pushed for the abolition of slavery; largely absorbed by Republican Party in 1854 |
| Conscience Whigs | a faction of the Whig Party in the state of Massachusetts noted for their moral opposition to slavery. They were noted as opponents of the more conservative "Cotton" Whigs who dominated the state party; led by Charles Sumner |
| Anti-Nebraska Democrats | an American political party formed in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Its founders, including Salmon P. Chase, held deep moral opposition to slavery, and were thus appalled by legislation that could lead to more slave-holding states; morphed into Republican Party |
| "Bleeding Kansas" | refers to the revolts that led to 200 dead in Kansas due to the Kansas-Nebraska Act |
| Popular Sovereignty | middle position on the slavery issue. It said that actual residents of territories should be able to decide by voting whether or not slavery would be allowed in the territory. The federal government did not have to make the decision, and by appealing to democracy Cass and Douglas hoped they could finesse the question of support for or opposition to slavery. Douglas applied it to Kansas in the Kansas-Nebraska Act which passed Congress in 1854. The Act had two unexpected results. By dropping the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (which said slavery would never be allowed in Kansas), it was a major boost for the expansion of slavery; led to trouble when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was created |
| "Border Ruffians" | refers to people who came from out of state to vote in the Kansas election to determine whether slavery would be legal in that state |
| John Brown | attacked Harpers Ferry; wanted to create a slave revolt; also fought in Kansas and Nebraska during the Bloody Kansas revolts |
| Charles Sumner | famous for being caned by Brooks; one of the Radical Republicans who pushed for equality of blacks; also lead the Conscience Whig party before it gave way to the Republican Party |
| Election of 1856 | Election in which Republicans nominated John C. Fremont ("Free soil, free speech, Fremont), Democrats nominated Buchanan (because he was unsullied by KS-NE act) (came from PA); Know-Nothings nominate Millard Fillmore; Buchanan wins |
| Dred Scott decision | a Supreme Court decision (ruled under the Taney court) that ruled that even free blacks were not equal to whites and that Constitutional rights did not apply to them |
| Lecompton Constitution | a pro-slavery faction-formed Constitution that was created for Kansas; Buchanan wanted to accept it, but Douglas rallied Congress to oppose him; Kansas joined as a free state just before the Civil War |
| Stephen Douglas | a Senator from Illinois; debated against Lincoln in a series of debates; expansionist and cared about economy; wanted a transcontinental railroad to run through Illinois |
| Abraham Lincoln | became the 16th President of the United States; debated Douglas in a series of debates; disliked slavery but was still racist; was President throughout Civil War |
| Lincoln-Douglas Debates | the series of debates that occurred between the two titular opponents for the Illinois Senate seat |
| Freeport Doctrine | articulated by Stephen A. Douglas at the second of the Lincoln-Douglas debates on August 27, 1858, in the titular town. Lincoln tried to force Douglas to choose between the principle of popular sovereignty proposed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the majority decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, which stated that slavery could not legally be excluded from U.S. territories (since Douglas professed great respect for Supreme Court decisions, and accused the Republicans of disrespecting the court, yet this aspect of the Dred Scott decision was contrary to Douglas' views and politically unpopular in Illinois). |
| "Fire-eaters" | refers to radical Southern Democrats who wanted to secede from the Union, such as Jefferson Davis; blocked northern legislation; once they were out of Congress, Republicans took advantage of their absence and passed laws that they blocked, before |
| Harpers Ferry Raid | a raid made by John Brown on a city in Virginia; wanted to inspire a slave revolt, but the slaves did not follow him; he was executed, later; supported by North; hated by South |
| Election of 1860 | an election between Stephen Douglas (Northern Democratic platform), Abraham Lincoln (Republican platform), John Breckenridge (Southern Democratic platform), and John Bell (Constitutional Party platform); Lincoln won; Southerners were outraged, because Lincoln didn't even appear on some of their ballots, and they were afraid that slavery was going to be taken away from them; South Carolina seceded shortly afterwards |
| Crittenden Compromise | an unsuccessful proposal introduced by Kentucky Senator John J. Crittenden on December 18, 1860. It aimed to resolve the U.S. secession crisis of 1860-1861 by addressing the grievances that led the slave states of the United States to contemplate secession from the United States; composed of constitutional amendments and congressional resolutions; vetoed by Lincoln; last-ditch attempt to appease South (would have prohibited later amendments) |
| Secession Ordinance | document drafted and ratified in 1860 and 1861 by the states officially seceding from the United States of America. Each state ratified its own, typically by means of a specially elected convention or general referendum. |
| Confederate States of America | refers collectively to the states who seceded from the Union (S.C., Miss., Flor., Ala., Geo., Louis., Tex., Ark., N.C., Tenn., and Vir.) |
| Jefferson Davis | a fire-eater who was elected the President of the Confederate States of America |
| Lincoln's First Inaugural Address | Lincoln's first public speech to the people in which he addressed issues of slavery and secession of the South |
| Fort Sumter | the first battle of the Civil War in which Confederates opened fire on a Union military fort in Charleston (4/12/1861) |
| Blockade | what the Union formed to try to prevent the South from trading with Europe (?) |
| Anaconda Plan | the plan for defeating the Confederacy; formed by Winfield Scott and George McClellan; involved forming a blockade and preventing resources from getting to the Confederacy |
| Wheeling Conferences | a series of two meetings that ultimately repealed the Ordinance of Secession passed by Virginia, thus establishing the Restored government of Virginia, which ultimately authorized the counties that organized the convention to become West Virginia. The convention was held at what became known as West Virginia Independence Hall in the namesake town (May - June, 1861) |
| Repealed Ordinance of Secession | the result of the Wheeling Conferences; West Virginia gained statehood after doing this |
| (First Battle of) Bull Run | A Civil War battle that occurred July 12, 1861; unseasoned Union Army troops under Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell against the equally unseasoned Confederate Army under Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard near Manassas Junction. McDowell's ambitious plan for a surprise flank attack against the Confederate left was not well executed by his inexperienced officers and men, but the Confederates, who had been planning to attack the Union left flank, found themselves at an initial disadvantage. Confederate reinforcements under the command of Brig. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston arrived from the Shenandoah Valley by railroad and the course of the battle changed. A brigade of Virginians under a relatively unknown colonel from the Virginia Military Institute, Thomas J. Jackson, stood their ground and Jackson received his famous nickname, "Stonewall Jackson". The Confederates launched a strong counterattack and as the Union troops began withdrawing under pressure, many panicked and it turned into a rout as they frantically ran in the direction of nearby Washington, D.C. Both sides were sobered by the violence and casualties of the battle, and they realized that the war would potentially be much longer and bloodier than they had originally anticipated; Confederate Victory |
| Merrimack (Confederacy) vs. Monitor (Union) | a famous naval war battle between the two namesake ships; both were ironclad; occurred March 9, 1862 |
| Battle of Shiloh | also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, was a major battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought April 6-7, 1862, in southwestern Tennessee. A Union army under Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had moved via the Tennessee River deep into Tennessee and was encamped principally at Pittsburg Landing on the west bank of the river. Confederate forces under Generals Albert Sidney Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard launched a surprise attack on Grant there. The Confederates achieved considerable success on the first day, but were ultimately defeated on the second day; Grant did well |
| Battle of Antietam | occurred September 17, 1862; fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and namesake Creek, as part of the Maryland Campaign, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Union soil. It was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with about 23,000 casualties; Lincoln gave Emancipation Proclamation afterwards; Lee's army vs. McClellan's; Burnside was also involved; McClellan let Lee retreat |
| Battle of Fredericksburg | fought December 11-15, 1862, in and around namesake town of Virginia, between General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside. The Union army's futile frontal assaults on December 13 against entrenched Confederate defenders on the heights behind the city is remembered as one of the most one-sided battles of the American Civil War, with Union casualties more than twice as heavy as those suffered by the Confederates. Burnside's plan was to cross the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg in mid-November and race to the Confederate capital of Richmond before Lee's army could stop him. Bureaucratic delays prevented Burnside from receiving the necessary pontoon bridges in time and Lee moved his army to block the crossings. When the Union army was finally able to build its bridges and cross under fire, urban combat resulted in the city on December 11-12. Union troops prepared to assault Confederate defensive positions south of the city and on a strongly fortified ridge just west of the city known as Marye's Heights. |
| Battle of Chancellorsville | a major battle of the American Civil War; It was fought from April 30 to May 6, 1863, in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, near the namesake village. Two related battles were fought nearby on May 3 in the vicinity of Fredericksburg. The campaign pitted Union Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker's Army of the Potomac against an army half its size, Gen. Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia; it's known as Lee's "perfect battle" because his risky decision to divide his army in the presence of a much larger enemy force resulted in a significant Confederate victory. The victory, a product of Lee's audacity and Hooker's timid combat performance, was tempered by heavy casualties and the mortal wounding of Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson to friendly fire, a loss that Lee likened to "losing my right arm." |
| Siege of Vicksburg | (May 18 - July 4, 1863) was the final major military action in the namesake Campaign of the American Civil War. In a series of maneuvers, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate army of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton into the defensive lines surrounding the fortress city of namesake city of Mississippi; together with Battle of Gettysburg, this battle forms the turning point of the Civil War |
| Battle of Gettysburg | fought July 1-3, 1863, in and around the namesake Pennsylvania town. The battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War, it is often described as the war's turning point. Union Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending Lee's invasion of the North. |
| Gettysburg Address | the public speech that Lincoln gave to the people after the namesake Civil War Battle in PA; "Four score and seven years ago...a new nation, conceived in liberty...we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground...government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.) |
| Fall of Atlanta | occurred on 9/2/1864; refers to the devastation of Georgia's capital due to Sherman's March to the Sea |
| William Tecumseh Sherman | the Union General who made a famous March to the Sea; executed total war in Georgia; destroyed railroad system |
| Sherman's March to the Sea | campaign by the namesake Union general as he marched through Georgia; destroyed crops and railroads along the way; supposed to be a punishment to the South |
| Fall of Richmond | occurred on 4/2/1865; beginning of the end of the Civil War; Lee realized that the war could not continue |
| Appomattox Court House | the location where the final surrender of the South took place |
| Union Advantages (Confederate Disadvantages) | refers to the fact that the Union had a better industry, higher population, and other things that the South did not have |
| Union Disadvantages (Confederate Advantages) | refers to the fact that the Union did not have very good generals and the fact that the Union had to invade the Confederacy in order to win |
| Trent Affair | an international incident in which American ships pulled over the namesake British ship in order to arrest John Slidell and another man for wanting to help Confederacy; seen as a violation of British sovereignty (and kind of ironic) |
| Alabama Issue | refers to the fact that Britain made ships for the Confederacy; got the U.S. very angry; sued Britain for it |
| Native Americans | no idea what this is doing here; apparently the Union had some sort of diplomacy with them |
| Confederate Diplomacy | refers to the attempts of the Confederacy to negotiate with world powers to help them defeat the Union; did not get much help except for the ships from Britain |
| Economic Activist Government | refers to the passing of acts by the Republicans while the Southern Democrats were not in office |
| Morrill Tariff Act | a protective tariff in the United States, adopted on March 2, 1861 during the administration of President James Buchanan. Named for its sponsor, who drafted it with the advice of Pennsylvania economist Henry Charles Carey, passage of the tariff was possible because many tariff-adverse Southerners had left Congress after their states declared their secession; raised rates to protect and encourage industry and the high wages of industrial workers. It replaced the low Tariff of 1857, which was written to benefit the South. |
| Homestead Act | Passed in 1862, it gave 160 acres of public land to any settler who would farm the land for five years. The settler would only have to pay a registration fee of $25. |
| Legal Tender Act | Lincoln signed in 1862, authorized $150 million in greenbacks. - Confederacy never made its paper money legal tender, responded by making more paper money, which accelerated southern inflation; created national currency for Union |
| Morrill Land Grant Act | an 1862 act; the federal government had donated public land to the states for the establishment of colleges; as a result 69 land-grant institutions were established. |
| Pacific Railway Act | an 1862 Act that authorized the construction of a transcontinental railroad |
| National Bank Act | established a system of national charters for banks, and created the United States National Banking System. They encouraged development of a national currency backed by bank holdings of U.S. Treasury securities and established the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as part of the United States Department of the Treasury and authorized the Comptroller to examine and regulate nationally chartered banks. The legacy of the Act is its impact on the national banking system as it stands today and its support of a uniform U.S. monetary policy; passed in 1863 |
| Inflation | the raising of prices due to an increase in the amount of money; occurred in both the North and the South, but hard times were more common in the South |
| Food riots | occurred in the spring of 1863; events of civil unrest in the Confederacy on April 2, 1863; were triggered mainly by foraging armies, both Union and Confederate, who ravaged crops and devoured draft animals. The staggering inflation created by the Confederate government was also a primary cause. The drought of 1862 created a poor harvest that did not yield enough in a time when food was already scarce. From 1861 to 1863, the price of wheat tripled and butter and milk prices quadrupled. Salt, which at the time was the only practical meat preservative, was very expensive (if available at all) as a result of the Union blockade and the capture of Avery Island by the Union. |
| William Holden | the 38th and 40th Governor of North Carolina in 1865 and from 1868 to 1871. He was the leader of the state's Republican Party during Reconstruction; was the second governor in American history to be impeached, and the first to be removed from office. He is the only North Carolina governor to have been impeached. (I don't know if it is this guy or not, because there are several famous guys with this same name) |
| Border States | states like Maryland and Missouri which were technically southern but remained with the Union |
| Habeas corpus | Latin for "show the body"; refers to the right of people to know why they are in jail; must be jailed for a reason; Lincoln suspended this act during the Civil War |
| Martial Law | the law that Lincoln imposed on states (mainly Maryland and other border states) during the Civil War; technically unconstitutional, but he had to do it |
| Women in the labor force | refers to the fact that women were working in factories while men were out fighting |
| Emancipation | the freeing (of slaves) |
| Thaddeus Stevens | a Republican "semi-Radical" who wanted abolition of slavery and equality of blacks, but was not extremely Radical; would settle for a compromise; apparently famous for being buried in a black cemetery; pushed for the "40 Acres and a Mule" policy |
| Confiscation Acts | acts that occurred in August, 1861 and July, 1862; laws passed by the United States Congress during the Civil War with the intention of freeing the slaves still held by the Confederate forces in the South; first authorized the confiscation of any Confederate property by Union forces ("property" included slaves). This meant that all slaves that fought or worked for the Confederate military were freed whenever they were "confiscated" by Union troops. The bill passed in the House 60-48 and in the Senate 24-11; second stated that any Confederate official, military or civilian, who did not surrender within 60 days of the act's passage would have their slaves freed. However, this act was only applicable to Confederate areas that had already been occupied by the Union Army. All slaves that took refuge in Union areas were "captives of war" and would be set free. |
| Voluntary Gradual Emancipation | refers to slow and voluntary abolition of slavery (?) |
| Horace Greeley | an American newspaper editor, a founder of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer, a politician, and an outspoken opponent of slavery. The New York Tribune (which he founded and edited) was America's most influential newspaper from the 1840s to the 1870s; known for the phrase "Go West, young man"; also wrote "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" |
| "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" | a famous editorial entitled written by Horace Greeley; demanded a more aggressive attack on the Confederacy and faster emancipation of the slaves. |
| Emancipation Proclamation | a famous proclamation effective 1/1/1863; stated that every slave state still in rebellion would have its slaves freed after the Union passed through it; issued by Lincoln |
| Conscription Act | effective March, 1863; legislation passed by the United States Congress during the American Civil War to provide fresh manpower for the Union Army; the controversial act required the enrollment of every male citizen and those immigrants who had filed for citizenship between ages twenty and forty-five. Federal agents established a quota of new troops due from each congressional district. In some cities, particularly New York City, enforcement of the act sparked civil unrest as the war dragged on, leading to the New York Draft Riots on July 13-16. |
| New York City Draft Riots | riots in the titular city due to the passing of the Conscription Act during July 13-16, 1863 |
| Peace Democrats | a vocal group of Democrats located in the Northern United States of the Union who opposed the American Civil War, wanting an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates; also called Copperheads |
| Clement L. Vallandigham | an Ohio politician, and leader of the Copperhead faction of anti-war Democrats during the American Civil War. He served two terms in the United States House of Representatives; banished to the Confederacy in 1863 |
| Copperheads | the derogatory name for the Peace Democrats; refers to a snake, but the Peace Democrats turned it into a symbol of pride and wore copper coins depicting liberty |
| Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction | a proclamation that became effective December, 1863; it stated that secession was not recognized and therefore readmission to the Union was automatic as soon as the rebellion ended; also explained 10% plan |
| Radical Republicans | Republicans who wanted instant abolition of the slaves and punishment for the South; against Lincoln; led by people like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens; against the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (thought it did away with majority rule and Democracy) |
| 10% Plan | Lincoln's plan to readmit states to the Union as long as the namesake amount of people agreed to return, free their slaves, provide education for free blacks, and draft Republican constitutions |
| Wade-Davis Bill | a bill drafted by the two titular Republicans; required that more than 50% of people in each state take a loyalty oath; pushed for readmission only through statewide constitutional conventions; Confederate officials and volunteers barred from process; also required that new state constitutions prohibited slavery (similar to 10% Plan except that > 50% was needed) |
| Pocket Veto | a veto in which the President does not sign the bill but rather just holds onto it to let it die; Lincoln did this to the Wade-Davis Bill |
| "Wade-Davis Manifesto" | a vitriolic editorial in the New York Tribune that attacked Lincoln when he did not sign the titular bill |
| Presidential Election of 1864 | Presidential Election in which Lincoln and Johnson ran as a part of the Union Party, General George B. McClellan ran as a Democrat; Fremont ran on the Radical Republican platform; Lincoln won; "Don't change horses in the middle of a stream" |
| Nevada Statehood | Lincoln and supporters wanted this to happen so that the namesake state would support Lincoln; became a state in 1864 |
| Thirteenth Amendment | ratified in December 1865; outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On December 18, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed it to have been adopted. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted after the American Civil War. |
| Second Inaugural Address | another famous public speech by Lincoln after he was elected for a second term; stated that he wanted to finish the business at hand with the South and allow them to rejoin the Union |
| Assassination | refers to the killing of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth |
| Reconstruction | refers to the time during which the South was making amends with the North and during which newly-freed slaves were starting to gain rights; two types: Presidential and Congressional |
| Andrew Johnson | the President who took over after Lincoln was killed; apparently known for saying "The Constitution as it is, and the Union as it was."; he was almost impeached |
| Johnsonian Reconstruction | Reconstruction that occurred mainly due to the actions of Lincoln's successor; wanted to make sure that the South did not get punished |
| Oath of Loyalty | a promise to be loyal; required of the Southern citizens and states before they could rejoin the Union |
| Pardons | excusing someone from a crime; many rich plantation owners were excused in this manner |
| Civil Rights Bill of 1866 | a federal law in the United States that was mainly intended to protect the civil rights of African-Americans, in the wake of the American Civil War. The Act was enacted by Congress over the veto of President Andrew Johnson. |
| Black Codes | laws that were passed to put blacks in a form of slavery; made them do work for petty offenses, some of which were not even real offenses (ex: unemployed blacks who "unlawfully" congregated were arrested and forced to work on public projects) |
| Fourteenth Amendment | ratified 7/9/1868; Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling by the Supreme Court (1857) that held that blacks could not be citizens of the United States. Its Due Process Clause prohibits state and local governments from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without certain steps being taken to ensure fairness. This clause has been used to make most of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, as well as to recognize substantive and procedural rights. Its Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction; prohibits Black Codes; bars from office former Confederate officials who rebelled; rejects Confederate Debt |
| Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony | two women who fought for women's suffrage |
| Reconstruction Acts | Acts that were passed during Reconstruction to make states rejoin the Union; created military districts; new Freedmen's Bureau Bill passed over Johnson veto; Military control of elections and constitutional conventions; only a majority of those voting required to ratify state constitutions |
| First Reconstruction Act | an act that divided the South into 5 military districts, not including Tennessee; state constitutions needed to provide black suffrage; must ratify 14th Amendment to enter U.S. |
| Second Reconstruction Act | an act that established and clarified that the military commanders held responsibility to register voters and hold elections in their territories; only the majority of votes cast were needed to get the constitution ratified, which enabled the constitution to be ratified much more easily against the will of many ex-Confederates; prevented former rebels from holding office |
| Tenure of Office Act | an act that stated that cabinet members could not be fired by the President without Congressional approval; one of the grounds for trying to impeach Johnson |
| Edwin M. Stanton | Secretary of War under Andrew Johnson (but before under Lincoln); when Andrew Johnson fired him, Congress accused Johnson of breaking the law by disregarding the Tenure of Office Act |
| Impeachment Trial | occurred after Johnson tried to fire Edwin M. Stanton |
| Acquittal | happened to Andrew Johnson when Edmund Ross decides not to vote that Andrew Johnson broke the law |
| Election of 1868 | Election in which it was Grant (Republican) vs. Horatio Seymour (Democrat); Grant won by a huge margin due to black suffrage in the South and due to the absence of white suffrage in the same area |
| Fifteenth Amendment | ratified 3/1870; ensured and reinforced black suffrage |
| "Black Republican" Reconstruction | an expression used to describe those years during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War in which former black slaves, with the aid of northern carpetbaggers and southern scalawags, won election to political offices throughout the former Confederacy. |
| Scalawag | white Southerner supporting Reconstruction policies after the Civil War usually for self-interest |
| Carpetbagger | refers to a northern politician who moves south; could be for a variety of reasons |
| Hiram Revels | the first African American to serve in the United States Senate. Because he preceded any African American in the House, he was the first African American in the U.S. Congress as well. He represented Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during Reconstruction. |
| Blanche K. Bruce | a U.S. politician who represented Mississippi as a Republican in the U.S. Senate from 1875 to 1881 and was the first elected African-American senator to serve a full term. Hiram R. Revels, also of Mississippi, was the first to ever serve in the U.S. Congress, but did not serve a full term. |
| 40 Acres and a Mule | refers to the short-lived policy, during the last stages of the American Civil War in 1865, of providing arable land to black former slaves who had become free as a result of the advance of the Union armies into the territory previously controlled by the Confederacy; failed policy; was pushed by Thaddeus Stevens; unfortunately, many blacks did not get this; now used as an expression noting some of the failures of Reconstruction |
| Wholesome compulsion | no idea what this means; could refer to the fact that whites thought that blacks were compulsed to do things? I have no idea |
| Sharecropping | system in which landowners leased a few acres of land to farmworkers in return for a portion of their crops |
| Crop-lien system | a system in which both the landowner and sharecropper depended on credit supplied by local bankers, merchants, and storekeepers for everything |
| Ku Klux Klan | a race-hate group that formed during the Reconstruction Era; at first started out hating blacks but now hates Jews as well; known for the sheets that they wear; physically punished blacks during the Reconstruction Era |
| Force Acts | acts passed from 1870-1871 that helped protect the voting rights of African-Americans; mainly aimed at limiting the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. Through the acts, actions committed with the intent to influence voters, prevent them from voting, or conspiring to deprive them of civil rights, including life, were made federal offenses. Thus the federal government had the power to prosecute the offenses, including calling federal juries to hear the cases. |
| Election of 1872 | Election in which Ulysses S. Grant (Republican) ran against Democrat Horace Greeley; Greeley died during the election; Grant still won by a landslide |
| Amnesty Act | an 1872 United States federal law that removed voting restrictions and office-holding disqualification against most of the secessionists who rebelled in the American Civil War, except for some 500 military leaders of the Confederacy. The original restrictive Act was passed by the United States Congress on May 1866. |
| Mid-term 1874 elections | midterm election in which Republicans lost heavily and the Democrats gained control of the House. It signaled the imminent end of Reconstruction, which Democrats opposed. |
| Panic of 1873 | an economic depression that started during Grant's terms in office; lasted until 1876 or 1879; one of the reasons why the Republicans lost so heavily in the midterm election |
| Civil Rights Act of 1875 | guaranteed that everyone, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, was entitled to the same treatment in "public accommodations" (i.e. inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement). If found guilty, the lawbreaker could face a penalty anywhere from $500 to $1,000 and/or 30 days to 1 year in prison. However, the law was rarely enforced, especially after the 1876 presidential election and withdrawal of federal troops from the South; also declared unconstitutional later |
| Election of 1876 | election in which Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) ran against Samuel Tilden (Democrat); Hayes won the 20 electoral votes needed for victory by one vote by a bitter political battle; These 20 electoral votes were in dispute in three states: Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina; each party reported its candidate had won the state |
| Congressional Electoral Commission | a temporary body created by Congress to resolve the disputed United States presidential election of 1876. It consisted of 15 members. The election was contested by the Democratic ticket, Samuel J. Tilden and Thomas A. Hendricks, and the Republican ticket, Rutherford B. Hayes and William A. Wheeler. Twenty electoral votes, from the states of Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina, were in dispute; the resolution of these disputes would determine the outcome of the election. Facing a constitutional crisis the likes of which the nation had never seen, Congress passed a law forming the Electoral Commission to settle the result. |
| Compromise of 1877 | refers to a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. Presidential election, regarded as the second "corrupt bargain", and ended Congressional ("Radical") Reconstruction. Through it, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden on the understanding that Hayes would remove the federal troops that were propping up Republican state governments in South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. Consequently, the incumbent President, Republican Ulysses S. Grant, removed the soldiers from Florida before Hayes as his successor removed the remaining troops in South Carolina and Louisiana. As soon as the troops left, many Republicans also left (or became Democrats) and the "Redeemer" Democrats took control. |
| James A. Garfield | a Radical Republican Representative from Ohio who eventually becomes president after Hayes; later assassinated |
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