Chapter 17

Black Codes

In the United States, the Black Codes were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War. These laws had the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans' freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt.

Waving the Bloody Shirt

In the history of the United States, "waving the bloody shirt" refers to the practice of politicians making reference to the blood of martyrs or heroes to criticize opponents.

Ten Percent Plan

It decreed that a state could be reintegrated into the Union when 10% of the 1860 vote count from that state had taken an oath of allegiance to the U.S. and pledged to abide by Emancipation. Voters could then elect delegates to draft revised state constitutions and establish new state governments. All southerners except for high-ranking Confederate army officers and government officials would be granted a full pardon. Lincoln guaranteed southerners that he would protect their private property, though not their slaves.

Special Field Order 15

On January 16, 1865, during the Civil War (1861-65), Union general William T. Sherman issued his Special Field Order No. 15, which confiscated as Union property a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to the St. John's River in Florida, including Georgia's Sea Islands and the mainland thirty miles in from the coast. The order redistributed the roughly 400,000 acres of land to newly freed black families in forty-acre segments.

Radical Republican

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). They initiated the Reconstruction Acts, and limited political and voting rights for ex-Confederates. They bitterly fought President Andrew Johnson; they weakened his powers and attempted to remove him from office through impeachment (they were one vote short). The Radicals were vigorously opposed by the Democratic Party and often by moderate and Liberal Republicans as well.

Slaughterhouse Cases

The Slaughter House Cases, rsolved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1873, ruled that a citizen's "privileges and immunities," as protected by the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment against the states, were limited to those spelled out in the Constitution and did not include many rights given by the individual states. Thus, a state may grant business monopolies to some of its citizens but not to others without running afoul of the Constitution. Slaughterhouse was the Court's first interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, arguably the most important addition to the Constitution after the Bill of Rights

Tenure of Office Act

The Tenure of Office Act was a United States 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.

1883 Civil Rights Cases

a group of five similar cases consolidated into one issue for the United States Supreme Court to review. The Court held that Congress lacked the constitutional authority under the enforcement provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals and organizations, rather than state and local governments.

Promontory Point

site in Utah where the railway lines built by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific met in 1869, completing the first transcontinental railroad line and contributing to the integration of the western territories into the rest of the Union and the development of the Great Plains.

Carpetbagger

a Northerner (Yankee) who moved to the South after the U.S. Civil War, especially during the Reconstruction era (1865-1877), in order to profit from the instability and power vacuum that existed at this time.

Sherman Land

1865 (June) Some 40,000 freed slaves were settled on what was referred to as "Sherman's Land" on some 400,000 acres of land in Georgia and South Carolina. Much of this land was for rice cultivation. The Freedmen created their own government, denied white access to the area and cultivated their land.

The Freedmen's Bureau

A U.S. federal government agency that aided distressed freedmen (freed slaves) during the Reconstruction era of the United States. The Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which established the Freedmen's Bureau on March 3, 1865, was initiated by President Abraham Lincoln and was intended to last for one year after the end of the Civil War.

Credit Mobilier Scandal

Construction company for the Union Pacific Railroad which received bonds and work contracts in exchange for giving congressmen gifts of money, stock, and railroad lands. It was one of many political scandals associated with the Grant administration.

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

In 1851, Stanton started working with Susan B. Anthony, a well-known abolitionist. The two women made a great team. Anthony managed the business affairs of the women's rights movement while Stanton did most of the writing. Together they edited and published a woman's newspaper, the Revolution, from 1868 to 1870. In 1869, Anthony and Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association. They traveled all over the country and abroad, promoting woman's rights.

Crop Lien System

The crop-lien system was a credit system that became widely used by cotton farmers in the United States in the South from the 1860s to the 1930s. Sharecroppers and tenant farmers who did not own the land they worked obtained supplies and food on credit from local merchants. They held a lien on the cotton crop and the merchants and landowners were the first ones paid from its sale. What was left over went to the farmer.

Ku Klux Klan

The first klan began violence against African Americans in the South during the Reconstruction Era of the 1860s, and was disbanded by 1869. The second was a very large, controversial, nationwide organization in the 1920s. The current manifestation consists of numerous small unconnected groups that use the KKK name. They have all emphasized secrecy and distinctive costumes. All have called for purification of American society, and all are considered right-wing.

Reconstruction Act

Three acts passed by Congress in 1867 that divided the southern states into five military districts and required them to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and write new constitutions guaranteeing black suffrage before being readmitted into the Union.

Redemption

Southern Democratic term for the end of Reconstruction and the return of white southern Democratic rule to the South.

Scalawag

Southern whites who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party, after the American Civil War.

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 crops produced on the land.

Civil Rights Act

Sometimes called Enforcement Act or Force Act, was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction Era that guaranteed African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations, public transportation, and prohibited exclusion from jury service.

Compromise of 1877

The Compromise of 1877 was an informal, unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election, pulled federal troops out of state politics in the South, and ended the Reconstruction Era. Through the Compromise, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden on the understanding that Hayes would remove the federal troops whose support was essential for the survival of Republican state governments in South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. The compromise involved Democrats who controlled the House of Representatives allowing the decision of the Electoral Commission (United States) to take effect. As soon as the troops left, many white Republicans also left and the "Redeemer" Democrats took control. What exactly happened is somewhat contested as the documentation is scanty. Black Republicans felt betrayed as they lost power.

Wade-Davis Bill

The Wade-Davis Bill of 1864 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. The bill passed both houses of Congress on July 2, 1864, but was pocket vetoed by Lincoln and never took effect. The Radical Republicans were outraged that Lincoln did not sign the bill. Lincoln wanted to mend the Union by carrying out the Ten percent plan. He believed it would be too difficult to repair all of the ties within the Union if the Wade-Davis bill passed.

Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871

The act empowered the President to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to combat the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other white supremacy organizations during the Reconstruction Era. The act was passed by the 42nd United States Congress during the Reconstruction Era and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on April 20, 1871. The act was the last of three Enforcement Acts passed by the United States Congress from 1870 to 1871 during the Reconstruction Era to combat attacks upon the suffrage rights of African Americans. The statute has been subject to only minor changes since then, but has been the subject of voluminous interpretation by courts.