First Exam Essay

Submitted By courtney217
Words: 1364
Pages: 6

13th Amendment- This amendment to the U.S. Constitution freed all slaves in the United States. After the Civil War ended, the former confederate states were required to ratify this amendment before they could be readmitted to the Union.

14th Amendment (1868)- Guaranteed rights of citizenship to former slaves, in words similar to those of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

Freedman’s Bureau- Reconstruction agency established in 1865 to protect the legal rights of former slaves and to assist with their education, jobs, healthcare, and landowning.

Oliver O. Howard- U.S. Union Officer in the American Civil War who headed the Freedmen’s Bureau to help rehabilitate former slaves during the period of Reconstruction.

Black codes- Laws passed in southern states to restrict the rights of former slaves; to combat the codes, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment and set up military governments in the southern states that refused to ratify the amendment.

Sharecropping- Type of farm tenancy that developed after the Civil War in which landless workers- often former slaves- farmed land in exchange for farm supplies and a share of the crop; differed from tenancy in that the terms were generally less favorable

Ku Klux Klan- Organized in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 to terrorize former slaves who voted and held political offices during Reconstruction; a revived organization in the 1910s and 1920s stressed white, Anglo-Saxon, fundamentalist Protestant supremacy; the Klan revived a third time to fight the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the South.

Klan Acts/Force Acts- They were criminal codes which protected blacks’ right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries and receive equal protection of the laws. The laws also allowed the federal government to intervene when states did not act.

Ulysses S. Grant- After distinguishing himself in the western theater of the Civil War, he was appointed general in chief of the Union army in 1864. Afterward, he defeated General Robert E. Lee through a policy of aggressive attrition. He constantly attacked Lee’s army until it was grind down. Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9th, 1865 at the Appromattox Court House. In 1868, he was elected President and his tenure suffered from scandals and fiscal problems including the debate on whether or not greenbacks, paper money, should be removed from circulation.

The Great Barbecue- Name for the appropriations that facilitated in particular the building of railroads. The North profited disproportionately from these appropriations.
Credit Mobilier- Constuction company guilt of massive overcharges for building the Union Pacific Railroad were exposed; high officials of the Ulysses S. Grant administration were implicated but never charged.

Samuel J. Tilden- A New York Democrat, ran against Republican Ruther B. Hayes for the presidency in 1876 and won the popular vote by a very small margin. He was denied the office after a congressional commission voted along partisan lines to award all disputed electoral regions to Hayes.

Rutherford B Hayes- The 19th President of the United States. As president, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction, began the efforts that led to civil service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Compromise of 1877 (Wormley Agreement)- Deal made by special congressional commission on March 2, 1877, to resolve the disputed presidential election of 1876; Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who had lost the popular vote, was declared the winner in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, marking the end of Reconstruction.

Pacific Railroad Act- Series of acts of Congress that promoted the contruction of the transcontinental railroad in the United States through authorizing the issuance of government bonds and the grants of land to railroad companies.

Homestead Act (1862)- Authorized