Term | Definition |
Reconstruction | Program implemented by the federal government between 1865 and 1877 to repair the damage to the south caused by the Civil War and restore the southern states to the Union |
Radical Republican | Advocated full citizenship rights for African Americans along with a harsh Reconstruction policy toward the south |
Freedman’s Bureau | Federal agency designed to aid freed slaves and poor white farmers in the south after the Civil War |
Andrew Johnson | Lincoln's VP who guided the U.S. through the early reconstruction |
Black Code | Laws that restricted African Americans' rights and opportunities |
Civil Rights Act of 1866 | law that established federal guarantees of civil rights for all citizens |
Fourteenth Amendment | 1868 constiutional amendment which defined citizenship and guaranteed citizens equal protection under the law |
Impeachment | Accusation against a public official of wrong doing in office |
Fifteenth Amendment | 1870 constitutional amendment that guaranteed voting rights regardless of race or previous condition of servitude |
Scalawag | Negative term for a southern white who supported the Republican Party after the Civil War |
Carpetbagger | Negative term for northerners who moved to the South after the Civil War |
Segregation | Forced separation, oftentimes by race |
Integration | Process of bringing people of different races, religions, and social classes together |
Sharecropping | System in which a farmer tended a portion of a planter's land in return for a share of the crop |
Tenant Farming | System in which a farmer paid rent to a landowner for the use of the land |
Ku Klux Klan | Organization that promotes hatred and discrimination against specific ethnic and religious groups |
Enforcement Acts | 1870 and 1871 laws that made it a federal offense to interfere with a citizen's right to vote |
Cash Crop | Crop grown for sale |
Reservation | Public lands where Native Americans were forced to live by the federal government |
Sand Creek Massacre | 1864 incident in which Colorado militia killed a camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho indians |
Sitting Bull | Native American chief known for leading his people during the years of resistance to United States government policies |
Battle of Little Big Horn | 1876 battle in which the Sioux defeated U.S. troops |
Wounded Knee | 1890 confrontation between U.S. calvary and Sioux that marked the end of Indian resistance |
Assimilate | To be absorbed into the main culture of a society |
Dawes General Allotment Act | 1887 law that divided reservation lands into private family plots |
George Custer | Union General that led U.S. troops into battle against the Sioux Indians in the Battle of Little Big Horn |
Homestead Act | |