Chapter 15: Vocab

Question 1

Ten Percent Plan

Answer 1

A plan proposed by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, but never implemented, that would have granted amnesty to most ex-Confederates and allowed each rebellious state to return to the Union as soon as 10 percent of its voters had taken a loyalty oath and the state had approved the Thirteenth Amendment.

Question 2

Black Codes

Answer 2

Laws passed by southern states after the Civil War that denied ex-slaves the civil rights enjoyed by whites, punished vague crimes such as “vagrancy” or failing to have a labor contract, and tried to force African Americans back to plantation labor systems that closely mirrored those in slavery times.

Question 3

Freedmen’s Bureau

Answer 3

Government organization created in March 1865 to aid displaced blacks and other war refugees. Active until the early 1870s, it was the first federal agency in history that provided direct payments to assist those in poverty and to foster social welfare.

Question 4

Civil Rights Act of 1866

Answer 4

Legislation passed by Congress that nullified the Black Codes and affirmed that African Americans should have equal benefit of the law.

Question 5

14th Amendment

Answer 5

Constitutional amendment ratified in 1868 that made all native-born or naturalized persons U.S. citizens and prohibited states from abridging the rights of national citizens, thus giving primacy to national rather than state citizenship.

Question 6

Reconstruction Act of 1867

Answer 6

An act that divided the conquered South into five military districts, each under the command of a U.S. general. To reenter the Union, former Confederate states had to grant the vote to freedmen and deny it to leading ex-Confederates.

Question 7

15th Amendment

Answer 7

Constitutional amendment ratified in 1869 that forbade states to deny citizens the right to vote on grounds of race, color, or “previous condition of servitude.”

Question 8

Americans Women’s Suffrage Association

Answer 8

Women’s suffrage organization created in 1890 by the union of the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. Up to national ratification of suffrage in 1920, the NAWSA played a central role in campaigning for women’s right to vote.

Question 8

Sharecropping

Answer 8

The labor system by which landowners and impoverished southern farmworkers, particularly African Americans, divided the proceeds from crops harvested on the landowner’s property. With local merchants providing supplies-in exchange for a lien on the crop- sharecropping pushed farmers into cash-crop production and often trapped them into long-term debt.

Question 9

National Women’s Suffrage Association

Answer 9

A suffrage group headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony that stressed the need for women to lead organizations on their own behalf. The NWSA focused exclusively on women’s rights - sometimes denigrating men of color, in the process - and took up the battle for a federal women’s suffrage amendment.

Question 10

Scalawags

Answer 10

Southern whites who supported Republican Reconstruction and were ridiculed by ex-Confederates as worthless traitors.

Question 11

Carpet-Baggers

Answer 11

A derisive name given by ex-Confederates to northerners who, motivated by idealism or the search for personal opportunity or profit, moved to the South during Reconstruction.

Question 12

Convict Leasing

Answer 12

Notorious system, begun during Reconstruction, whereby southern state officials allowed private companies to hire out prisoners to labor under brutal conditions in mines and other industries.

Question 13

Civil Rights Act of 1875

Answer 13

A law that required “full and equal” access to jury service and to transportation and public accommodations, irrespective of race.

Question 14

Classical Liberalism

Answer 14

The political ideology of individual liberty, private property, a competitive market economy, free trade, and limited government. The idea being that the less government does, the better, particularly in reference to economic policies such as tariffs and incentives for industrial development. Attacking corruption and defending private property, late-nineteenth-century liberals generally called for elite governance and questioned the advisability of full democratic participation.

Question 15

Laissez Faire

Answer 15

The principle that the less government does, the better, particularly in reference to the economy.

Question 16

Credit Mobilier

Answer 16

A sham corporation set up by shareholders in the Union Pacific Railroad to secure government grants at an enormous profit. Organizers of the scheme protected it from investigation by providing gifts of its stock to powerful members of Congress.

Question 17

“Redemption”

Answer 17

A term used by southern Democrats for the overthrow of elected governments that ended Reconstruction in many parts of the South. So-called Redeemers terrorized Republicans, especially in districts with large proportions of black voters, and killed and intimidated their opponents to regain power.

Question 18

Ku Klux Klan

Answer 18

Secret society that first undertook violence against African Americans in the South after the Civil War but was reborn in 1915 to fight the perceived threats posed by African Americans, immigrants, radicals, feminists, Catholics, and Jews.

Question 19

Enforcement

Answer 19

Acts passed in Congress in 1870 and signed by President U. S. Grant that were designed to protect freedmen’s rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Authorizing federal prosecutions, military intervention, and martial law to suppress terrorist activity, the Enforcement Laws largely succeeded in shutting down Klan activities.

Question 20

Slaughter-House Cases

Answer 20

A group of decisions begun in 1873 in which the Court began to undercut the power of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect African American rights.

Question 21

Civil Rights Cases

Answer 21

A series of 1883 Supreme Court decisions that struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, rolling back key Reconstruction laws and paving the way for later decisions that sanctioned segregation.