Week 6: Reconstruction Flashcards
1
Q
What are the dates of Reconstruction?
A
1865-1877
2
Q
What are the Reconstruction Amendments?
A
3 key amendments adopted by Congress after the end of the Civil War
3
Q
13th Amendment to the US Constitution
A
- January 1865
- outlaws slavery
4
Q
14th Amendment
A
- July 1886
- guarantees equality before the law for all citizens
- includes African-Americans
5
Q
15th Amendment
A
- February 1890
- citizens cannot be denied the right to vote based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”
6
Q
Why were the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments intended?
A
- to guarantee the freedom of former slaves
- to prevent discrimination
- to guarantee certain civil rights
7
Q
Thaddeus Stevens
A
- 1792-1868
- one of the leaders of the group of Radical Republicans in Congress (along with Charles Sumner)
- pressed for black suffrage and equal civil rights in the 1860’s
- after the abolition of slavery was secured by the 13th amendment
8
Q
The Freedmen’s Bureau
A
- established in 1865 under the shelter of the army
- helped the Southern black population in the transition from slavery to freedom
- during the immediate post-war period:
- provided food
- organized hospitals and schools
- supervised the terms under which blacks were hired as free labourers
9
Q
“First Colored Senators and Representatives”
A
- numerous African-American leaders emerged
- provided members of :
- the state convention and legislatures
- US Representatives
- 2 Senators (Hiram Revels and the ex-slave Blanche K. Bruce, both from Mississippi)
10
Q
Freedmen in the South
A
- freedmen not accepted in the South
- slavery dead but not racial oppression
- lynchings and violence against black people widespread
- their basic rights were denied: attempt to return to the antebellum system of racial oppression and exploitation
11
Q
What were the 2 principal ways of oppressing black population in the South?
A
- violence
- laws
12
Q
Ku Klux Klan
A
- used brutal techniques to restore Democratic control of the Southern states by preventing blacks from:
- voting
- owning land
–> used methods of intimidation against:
- black people: so that they would never again make any attempt to assert themselves
- people who helped or co-operated with the blacks
13
Q
Black Codes
A
- devised by Southern States
- deprived Black people of many rights (miscegenation)
- compelled them to work (need of workforce by white planters)
–> apprenticed orphans to white masters (allowed to inflict corporal punishment)
–> forbade freedmen to leave their employment before the term of their working contract
–> punished ‘vagrancy’ with fines or imprisonment
14
Q
End of Reconstruction
A
- Democrats regained control of state assemblies and passed Jim Crow Laws segregating blacks and whites
- Segregation was declared constitutional
–> 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision: established the ‘separate but equal’ legal doctrine
–> reversed in 1954 by another Supreme Court decision: Brown v. Board of Education
