U.S. History 2

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Unit 1:  Reconstruction

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Reconstruction: Characters and Key Terms

Characters

Keep this list of major characters in mind in order to follow the action more easily.  Click on each person or Key Term to see his/her/its corresponding description and/or definition. You can also click the "Show All" button to expand all characters and descriptions at once.   16th President of the United States who wanted to be lenient towards the South after the Civil War and offered the 10% Plan for Reconstruction. 17th President of the United States who clashed with Congressional Republicans over Reconstruction and became the first President to be impeached by Congress. U.S. Army General who was appointed by President Andrew Johnson to head the Freedman's Bureau to help rehabilitate the former slaves after the Civil War. Abolitionist and women's rights activist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement helping to found the National Woman Suffrage Association. Social activist and suffrage leader who was instrumental in orchestrating the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Revels, a free person of color, was the first African-American to serve in Congress, representing Mississippi. Long, born a slave, was elected to fill a vacancy in Congress at the same time as Revels, representing Georgia.Elected President after the controversial and disputed election of 1876, which saw the end of Reconstruction due to a possible informal agreement known as the Compromise of 1877. Faction of the Republican Party that pushed for a complete abolition of slavery before the Civil War and full civil rights for African-Americans after the war.

Key Terms

The period following the Civil War where attempts were made to reintegrate the eleven former Confederate States, as well as afford the former slaves the freedoms they had been denied under slavery. Abraham Lincoln's Reconstruction plan which said that an individual southern state could be readmitted into the Union once ten percent of the voters (from the 1860 presidential election) swore an oath of allegiance to the United States. Radical Republican Reconstruction plan which required fifty percent of a state's white males take a loyalty oath that they never supported the Confederacy to be readmitted to the United States. At the end of the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction, Radical Republicans who controlled Congress, opposed President Abraham Lincoln's plan for Reconstruction because they felt it was too lenient towards the South. One of their plans called for an Ironclad Oath along with the Wade-Davis Bill. This oath would make it extremely difficult for former Confederate officials and others to regain power. It required all voters and officials to swear they never supported the Confederacy.This was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments, and was ratified by the requisite number of states on December 6, 1865. It abolished slavery and indentured servitude in the United States. Several states did not ratify it until the 20th Century, the last being Mississippi in 1995. President Andrew Johnson's plan for Reconstruction was almost exactly the same as Abraham Lincoln's plan. If you took a loyalty oath, you would be granted a pardon, unless you were a high ranking Confederate official possessing over $20,000 in property. A state could not be readmitted to the Union until they abolished slavery, and they also had to repeal their ordinance of secession.This committee was established by Congress in December, 1865. Its purpose was to investigate and report on the conditions in the former Confederate States. Because of the testimony, Congress would propose laws which would eventually become the 14th and 15th Amendments, helping the former slaves gain civil, equal and voting rights.Officially the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Land, this agency of the government was established by Congress in 1865 at the beginning of Reconstruction to help the millions of former slaves after the Civil War. It worked in several areas, providing food, medical supplies, housing as well as general relief, while also building schools and providing other educational opportunities. They provided legal assistance and attempted to distribute land to former slaves. The program was successful in some areas, but President Johnson opposed areas, and vetoed measures, and it gradually lost support in the North.These codes, which were similar to Slave Codes, were adopted in former Confederate states beginning in late 1865 to limit the freedoms of the former slaves. These codes placed restrictions on the types of jobs African-Americans could do, as well as where they could live, in many instances forcing them to sign yearly labor contracts that kept them on the same farms or plantations they worked on as slaves. The codes restricted all freedoms, including stripping the freedmen of their right to sue in court or enter into legal contracts. They also restricted travel, marriage, the right to own or carry firearms as well as others. The second of the Reconstruction Amendments, ratified in 1868, this addition to the Constitution guaranteed citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States, including former slaves. It also aimed to grant civil rights to African-Americans, but many of these rights were not truly felt for close to 100 years.</panel topic>These acts, passed in 1867 and 1868 over President Johnson's veto, dealt with the readmission to the United States of the former Confederate States. The acts defined the makeup of state constitutions, which had to include the 14th Amendment, as well as dealing with military occupation in the South. Georgia was the last state readmitted in 1870 (after it had been expelled for removing black legislators from its legislature.The 15th Amendment granted African-American men the right to vote by making it illegal to prevent someone from voting based on their race, color or previous condition as a slave. Southern states went around this amendment by creating poll taxes and literacy tests, as well as violence and intimidation, which kept African-Americans from either registering to vote, or voting in large numbers until the late 1960s. Poor whites were able to get around poll taxes and literacy tests through grandfather clauses and other exemptions.This organization was founded in 1869 by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They were considered a radical organization at the time, and even came into conflict with other suffrage groups.Union Leagues were secretive societies created, first during the Civil War in the North to promote pro-Union policies and support for President Lincoln, and after the war in the South as arms of the Republican Party to promote their policies and politics. They helped register black voters, as well as tried to protect them from the Ku Klux Klan and other secret societies created in the South to oppose African-American rights. In an effort to both find a labor system to replace slavery as well as keep the newly freed slaves as close to slavery as possible, the South turned to sharecropping. This system was a way for the former slaves (as well as poor whites) to earn money or a portion of the crops they grew while living on someone else's land. In many instances this system turned into debt peonage or debt slavery where the sharecroppers were tied to the land, usually the same land they had lived and worked on as slaves, through debt as they were rarely able to pay off what they borrowed with their meager earnings.The Klan was one of several secret societies that appeared in the South after the Civil War. It was founded by six former Confederate soldiers in 1866, and initially was a fraternal organization. It became a "national" organization in 1867 when they held a meeting in Nashville, Tennessee and selected former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest as their first Grand Wizard. The Klan took aim at African-Americans and whites, especially Republicans in the South, terrorizing and murdering them in order to keep them as second class citizens in a position as close to slavery as possible.This was one of the most controversial Presidential Elections in American history. Samuel Tilden, the Democratic candidate from New York received 184 Electoral Votes, while Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican from Ohio, received 165. In 1876, you needed 185 to win, but three Southern States, Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina, all submitted returns saying both candidates had won. These states also were still being governed under Reconstruction, and had the United States Military present within their borders. The outcome of the election would not be known for months.This was the informal and unwritten deal which resolved the Election of 1876 and brought Reconstruction to an end. In return for Hayes being awarded the disputed electoral votes, and the Presidency, all U.S. military forces were to be removed from the South, Hayes was to appoint one Southerner to his Cabinet, another Transcontinental Railroad would be constructed in the South, financial aid to rebuild the region, as well as assurances that the North would not interfere with Southern treatment of the former slaves.