Marcus Pando Period 4 Chapter 22 Key Terms Describe and state the historical significance of the following: 7. Freedmen’s Bureau Initiated by President Abraham Lincoln and was intended to last for one year after the end of the Civil War. At the end of the war, the Bureau’s main role was providing emergency food, housing, and medical aid to refugees, though it also helped reunite families. Later, it focused its work on helping the freedmen adjust to their conditions of freedom.
Its main job was setting up work opportunities and supervising labor contracts. 8. Exodusters Was a name given to African Americans who left the south[Kansas] in 1879 and 1880. After the end of Reconstruction, racial oppression and rumors of the reinstitution of slavery led many freedmen to seek a new place to live. 9. Wade-Davis Bill Was a bill proposed for the Reconstruction of the South written by two Radical Republicans, Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland.
In contrast to President Abraham Lincoln’s more lenient Ten Percent Plan, the bill made re-admittance to the Union for former Confederate states contingent on a majority in each Southern state to take the Ironclad oath to the effect they had never in the past supported the Confederacy. 10. Percent Plan 11. moderate/radical Republicans Radical Republicans were a loose faction of American politicians within the Republican Party from about 1854 (before the American Civil War) until the end of Reconstruction in 1877.
They called themselves “radicals” and were opposed during the war by moderates and conservative factions led by Abraham Lincoln and after the war by self-described “conservatives” (in the South) and “Liberals” (in the North). Radicals strongly opposed slavery during the war and after the war distrusted ex-Confederates, demanding harsh policies for the former rebels, and emphasizing civil rights and voting rights for Freedmen (recently freed slaves). [1] 12. Black Codes Black Codes were laws in the United States after the Civil War with the effect of limiting the civil rights and civil liberties of blacks.
Even though the U. S. constitution originally discriminated against blacks and both Northern and Southern states had passed discriminatory legislation from the early 19th century, the term Black Codes is used most often to refer to legislation passed by Southern states at the end of the Civil War to control the labor, migration and other activities of newly-freed slaves. 13. sharecropping Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land (e. g. , 50% of the crop).
Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range of different situations and types of agreements that have encompassed the system. Some are governed by tradition, others by law. 14. Civil Rights Act A United States federal law that was mainly intended to protect the civil rights of African-Americans, in the wake of the American Civil War. The Act was enacted by Congress in 1865 but vetoed by President Andrew Johnson. In April 1866 Congress again passed the bill. Although Johnson again vetoed it, a two-thirds majority in each house overcame the veto and the bill became law. 5. Fourteenth Amendment Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) that had held that black people could not be citizens of the United States. [1] Its Due Process Clause prohibits state and local governments from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without certain steps being taken to ensure fairness. This clause has been used to make most of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, as well as to recognize substantive and procedural rights.
Its Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. This clause was the basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision which precipitated the dismantling of racial segregation in United States education. In Reed v. Reed (1971), the Supreme Court ruled that laws arbitrarily requiring sex discrimination violated the Equal Protection Clause. The amendment also includes a number of clauses dealing with the Confederacy and its officials. 17. Reconstruction Act
After the end of the American Civil War, as part of the on-going process of Reconstruction, the United States Congress passed four statutes known as Reconstruction Acts. The actual title of the initial legislation was “An act to provide for the more efficient government of the Rebel States” and it was passed on March 2, 1867. Fulfillment of the requirements of the Acts were necessary for the former Confederate States to be readmitted to the Union. The Acts excluded Tennessee, which had already ratified the 14th Amendment and had been readmitted to the Union. 8. Fifteenth Amendment Prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” (for example, slavery). It was ratified on February 3, 1870. The Fifteenth Amendment is one of the Reconstruction Amendments. 19. Ex parte Milligan Was a United States Supreme Court case that ruled that the application of military tribunals to citizens when civilian courts are still operating is unconstitutional.
It was also controversial because it was one of the first cases after the end of the American Civil War. 22. scalawags Were southern whites who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party after the Civil War. Like similar terms such as “carpetbagger” the word has a long history of use as a slur against southerners considered by other conservative or pro-federation Southerners to betray southern values by supporting policies considered Northern such as desegregation and racial integration. 1] The term is commonly used in historical studies as a neutral descriptor of Southern White Republicans, though some historians have discarded the term due to its history of pejorative connotations. [2] 23. carpetbaggers Was a pejorative term Southerners gave to Northerners (also referred to as Yankees) who moved to the South during the Reconstruction era, between 1865 and 1877.
24. Ku Klux Klan advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism. 10] Since the mid-20th century, the KKK has also been anti-communist. [10] The current manifestation is splintered into several chapters with no connections between each other; it is classified as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. [11] It is estimated to have between 3,000 and 5,000 members as of 2012. [12] The first Klan flourished in the Southern United States in the late 1860s, then died out by the early 1870s. Members adopted white costumes: robes, masks, and conical hats, designed to be outlandish and terrifying, and to hide their identities. 13]
The second KKK flourished nationwide in the early and mid 1920s, and adopted the same costumes and code words as the first Klan, while introducing cross burnings. [14] The third KKK emerged after World War II and was associated with opposing the Civil Rights Movement and progress among minorities. The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent reference to the USA’s “Anglo-Saxon” and “Celtic” blood, harking back to 19th-century nativism and claiming descent from the original 18th-century British colonial revolutionaries. 15] The first and third incarnations of the Klan have well-established records of engaging in terrorism and political violence, though historians debate whether or not the tactic was supported by the second KKK. 25. Force Acts Can refer to several groups of acts passed by the United States Congress. The term usually refers to the events after the American Civil War. 26. Tenure of Office Act Was a federal law (in force from 1867 to 1887) that was intended to restrict the power of the President of the United States to remove certain office-holders without the approval of the Senate.
The law was enacted on March 3, 1867, over the veto of President Andrew Johnson. It purported to deny the president the power to remove any executive officer who had been appointed by a past president, without the advice and consent of the Senate, unless the Senate approved the removal during the next full session of Congress. 27. Impeachment of President Johnson The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States, was one of the most dramatic events in the political life of the United States during Reconstruction, and the first impeachment in history of a sitting United States president.
Johnson was impeached for his efforts to undermine Congressional policy; he was acquitted by one vote. The Impeachment was the consummation of a lengthy political battle, between the moderate Johnson and the “Radical Republican” movement that dominated Congress and sought control of Reconstruction policies. Johnson was impeached on February 24, 1868 in the U. S. House of Representatives on eleven articles of impeachment detailing his “high crimes and misdemeanors”,[1] in accordance with Article Two of the United States Constitution.
The House’s primary charge against Johnson was with violation of the Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress the previous year. Specifically, he had removed Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War (whom the Tenure of Office Act was largely designed to protect), from office and replaced him with Major General Lorenzo Thomas. The House agreed to the articles of impeachment on March 2, 1868. The trial began three days later in the Senate, with Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding.
Trial concluded on May 26 with Johnson’s acquittal, the votes for conviction being one less than the required two-thirds tally. The impeachment and subsequent trial gained a historical reputation as an act of political expedience, rather than necessity, based on Johnson’s defiance of an unconstitutional piece of legislation and with little regard for the will of the public (which, despite the unpopularity of Johnson, opposed the impeachment). Until the impeachment of Bill Clinton 131 years later, it was the only presidential impeachment in the history of the United States.
