Chapter Vocabulary | Important Laws & Acts of Congress | Key Players | Racial Tensions in the South | A Political Tango |
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What is impeach?
To formally charge a public official with misconduct in office.
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What is the Civil Rights Act of 1866?
This act granted full citizenship to African Americans and gave the federal government the power to intervene in state affairs to protect their rights.
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Who was Andrew Johnson?
This man's plan for rebuilding the Union, called "Restoration," included the pardoning of high-ranking Confederate officials only by appealing to the President.
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What is the Fifteenth Amendment?
This Amendment prohibited any state from denying an individual the right to vote because of race.
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What was the Ten-Percent Plan (or Lincoln's Plan)?
This plan for Reconstruction gave responsibility to the States because only 10% of the voting population had to take an oath of loyalty in order to rejoin the Union.
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What is amnesty?
The granting of pardon to a large number of persons; protection from prosecution for an illegal act.
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What is Plessy v. Ferguson?
This Supreme Court case ruled that segregation was legal as long as African Americans had access to public places equal to those of whites.
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What was the Freedmen's Bureau?
This group of people helped African Americans adjust to freedom, giving them clothes, food, medical services, and education.
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What is a literacy test?
In order to keep former slaves from voting, Southern states imposed this,restriction, in which they had to read and explain difficult parts of state constitution.
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Who were the Radical Republicans?
This Congressional group passed the Wade-Davis Bill, and wanted to "punish" the South for their actions in the Civil War.
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What is sharecropping?
A system of farming in which a farmer works land for an owner who provides equipment and seeds and receives a share of the crop.
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What are the Reconstruction Acts of 1867?
This pair of acts called for the creation of new governments in the 10 Southern states that had not ratified the 14th Amendment.
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Who was Edwin Stanton?
This Secretary of War was removed from President Johnson's cabinet, leading to a breech in the Tenure of Office Act.
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What is a grandfather clause?
This exception allowed people who did not pass the literacy test to vote if their fathers or grandfathers voted before Reconstruction.
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What is the Election of 1876?
The outcome of this election, between Rutherford B. Hayes (R) and Samuel Tilden (D), was in doubt because four states had disputed returns.
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What are black codes?
Laws passed in the South just after the Civil War aimed at controlling freedmen and enabling plantation owners to exploit African American workers.
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What is the Fourteenth Amendment?
This Amendment to the Constitution granted full citizenship to all people born in the United States, except Native Americans.
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Who was Rutherford B. Hayes?
This former governor of Ohio won the Presidency after a dispute in the election results.
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What are Jim Crow laws?
This is the slang name for laws in the South that required African Americans and whites to be separated in almost every public place.
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What is the Compromise of 1877?
President Hayes signed this agreement, which promised to pull Union soldiers out of Southern governments so that the South could learn to support itself.
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What is a poll tax?
A tax of a fixed amount per person that had to be paid before the person could vote.
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What is the Tenure of Office Act?
This act prohibited the President from removing government officials, including members of his own cabinet, without the Senate's approval.
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Who were carpetbaggers?
These people moved from the North to the South in order to support Republican Reconstruction; their nickname comes from the cheap suitcases they carried when they arrived.
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What is the Ku Klux Klan?
This hate group, begun during Reconstruction, was responsible for terrorizing and lynching many African Americans because they did not behave as white Southerners thought they should behave.
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What is agriculture?
Despite Reconstruction efforts, this remained the South's main economic activity.
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