Unit 9 - Reconstruction

Niagara Movement

(1905) W.E.B. Du Bois and other young activists, who did not believe in accommodation, came together at Niagara Falls in 1905 to demand full black equality. Demanded that African Americans get right to vote in states where it had been taken away, segregation be abolished, and many discriminatory barriers be removed. Declared commitment for freedom of speech, brotherhood of all peoples, and respect for workingman. Four years later this movement joined with white progressives sympathetic to their cause to form NAACP, the new organization later led to the drive for equal rights.

W.E.B. Du Bois

A Harvard trained professional who called for equal rights immediately for African Americans. Du Bois helped to found Niagra Movement in 1905 to fight for and establish equal rights for blacks. This movement later led to the establishment of the NAACP. He believed that African Americans should strive for full rights immediately and attend liberal arts college. He believed that blacks should work for civil rights and political equality.

Plessy v. Ferguson

A United States Supreme Court Case that upheld that segregation and Jim Crow Laws were constitutional if facilities were "separate but equal." Homer Plessy was a light skinned African American man who tried to sit in a "whites only" railway car. He sued after he was removed. The U.S.S.C. did not define "equal" allowing private businesses and schools to provide unequal facilities.

Civil Rights Act of 1866

A congressional act passed that gave blacks citizenship and forbade states from passing black codes. This violated the Dred Scott decision which stated that blacks were not citizens. To ensure this act Congress had to pass the 14th Amendment. Johnson vetoed but Congress overrode the veto.

Wade-Davis Bill

A congressional bill that proposed that Congress should be in charge of Reconstruction not the president. It states that a majority of a Confederate states population needed to swear an oath to support the Constitution for a state to reenter the Union. Lincoln used a pocket veto to kill this bill

Freedman's Bureau

A federal agency started a month before the end of the Civil War to help free slaves and poor whites to adjust to life after the Civil War. It attempted to find labor contracts for Freedmen and protect the rights of Freedmen during Reconstruction. However, agents often encouraged Freedmen to sign labor contracts with their former owners. It distributed food and clothing. It's major accomplishment was establishing schools and hospitals.

Poll Tax

A fee that a person had to pay to vote. These taxes prevented many African Americans and poor whites from voting.

Grandfather Clause

A law passed to exempt people from a law. Southern states passed grandfather clauses to allow poor whites to vote and exempt them from poll taxes and literacy tests. The grandfather clauses said that if a person's father or grandfather could vote in 1867 voting requirements like poll taxes or literacy tests did not apply to them. No African Americans were allowed to vote before 1867.

Pocket Veto

A president must sign or veto a bill within 10 days. If they do nothing it becomes a law. However, a pocket veto occurs when a bill is passed less than 10 days before the end of a congressional session. A president can hold onto the bill or "pocket it" to prevent it from becoming a law. Abraham Lincoln used a pocket veto to kill the Wade-Davis Bill

Ku Klux Klan

A secret, white supremacy group started to terrorize blacks and white supporters of Reconstruction. The largest and most famous white supremacy group. They looked to drive out Northern reformers and politicians and sought to suppress blacks from voting or exercising their civil rights. They also hope to create a divide between poor whites and blacks, who if banned together would be able to out vote any other group in the South. They attempted to regain the South for whites and the Democratic Party. Their actions enraged Grant and Republicans and their numbers diminished after the Enforcement Acts were passed. They later saw a revival in 1915.

Enforcement Acts

A series of acts passed by Congress to limit the activities of white supremacy groups like the Klu Klux Klan. These acts made it a federal crime to interfere with a citizen's right to vote, put federal elections under the supervision of federal marshals, and outlawed the activities of the Klan. These laws did help to limit white supremacy group activities but many did not receive convictions.

Jim Crow Laws

A series of laws passed in southern states that promoted segregation and limited the rights of African Americans. Named after a "racist" minstrel show called "Jump Jim Crow." White actors would paint themselves in black face and pretend to be African American. The shows exaggerated negative stereotypes of African Americans.

13th Amendment

Abolished slavery everywhere in the United States. Fulfilled the promise of freedom for enslaved peoples created by the Emancipation Proclamation. Stated, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Lincoln encouraged Congress to pass this amendment after the Election of 1864.

Exodusters

African Americans who moved from the South to the West in order to escape sharecropping and discrimination. Many African Americans moved to Kansas.

Segregation

After "redeeming" the South with the end of Reconstruction many states began to pass Jim Crow Laws that promoted segregation in private businesses. This meant that races were kept separate and had separate facilities and building entrances.

Redemption

After the Panic of 1873 and a growing dislike for the Republican Party more people began to vote for the Democratic Party. By 1876, Southern Democrats were reelected by appealing to racism. They were able to win back the support of white small farm owners and win back state legislatures. They called this "redeeming" or saving the South.

Reconstruction Act of 1867

Also called the Military Reconstruction Act. This act wiped out Presidential Reconstruction and did not recognize the reentry of states under Lincoln and Johnson. It revoked statehood for all states with the exception of Tennessee which had ratified the 14th Amendment. It divided the remaining 10 Confederate states into 5 military districts under martial law and placed them under the control of a Union General. The voters in each district included would elect delegates to new state conventions where they would draft new state constitutions. It required ALL males, including blacks to be included. Military officers supervised the votes. States had to ratify the 14th Amendment before it could be readmitted. Johnson vetoed it but it was overridden. Six former Confederate states were reentered by 1868.

Atlanta Compromise

An 1895 address by Booker T. Washington that urged whites and African Americans to work together for the progress of all. Delivered at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, the speech was widely interpreted as approving racial segregation. Washington suggested that African-Americans should not focus on civil rights or social equality but concentrate on economic self-improvement. He wanted blacks to postpone their fight for civil rights. Other black leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois criticized Washington's views.

14th Amendment

An amendment passed to overturn the Supreme Court Dred Scott decision to give blacks full citizenship. It provided a constitutional basis for the Civil Rights Act. The Fourteenth Amendment made "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" citizens of the country. All were entitled to equal protection of the law, and no state could deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. It said if any state prevented a portion of its male citizens from voting, that state would lose a percentage of its congressional seats equal to the percentage of citizens kept from the polls. Another provision barred most Confederate leaders from holding federal or state offices unless they were permitted to do so by a two-thirds-majority vote of Congress. Johnson encouraged Southern states not to ratify the Amendment.

The Panic of 1873

An economic crisis that started because a banking firm of Jay Cooke and Company was forced to close. This contributed to the public's dislike of the Republican Party and Reconstruction. People started to resent the money and effort spent to rebuild the South and protect Freedmen.

Congressional Reconstruction

Angered by Johnson's failure to support the Freedmen's Bureau and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Moderate and Radical Republicans worked to take Reconstruction out of Johnson's hands. They overrode his vetoes and passed the 14th and 15th Amendments. They also revoked statehood for former Confederate states that failed to meet all the requirements for reentry into the Union.

The Tenure of Office Act

Congress passed this act to prevent Johnson from firing cabinet officials he did not agree with and said that the president must seek the approval of the Senate. Johnson believe that this act violated the separation of powers and fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The House promptly brought up impeachment charges.

Carpetbaggers

Derogatory name created by Southerners for Northerners who came down to help rebuild during Reconstruction. Southerners believed that these people wanted to take advantage of the South. However, many Northerners did want to help.

Ulysses S. Grant as President

Elected during the election of 1868. Many African Americans in the South voted for Grant. He made poor choices for his cabinet and his administration suffered from evidence of bribery and scandals like the Whiskey Ring Scandal.

Whiskey Ring Scandal

Government officals and distillers had filed false tax reports cheating the government out of millions of dollars. Orville E. Babcock, Grant's private secretary, was supposedly involved. This scandal as well as other involving Grant's administration hurt the Republican Party and Reconstruction.

Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (1868)

Impeachment means bring up formal charges of misconduct against an official. Andrew Johnson was impeached by the House after he violated the Tenure of Office Act. He was acquitted by the Senate by one vote.

President Andrew Johnson's Plan

Johnson plan required a state to withdraw its declaration of secession, swear allegiance to the Union, annul Confederate war debts, and ratify the 13th Amendment. Johnson wished to prevent most high-ranking Confederates and wealthy Southern landowners from taking the oath needed for voting privileges who needed to be granted a personal pardon. He did not address the needs of former slaves. He supported states' rights and white supremacy. Most states were reentered under this plan but many of the states did not accept all the terms of reentry. Under Johnson's plans Southerners were given back their political rights. Southern states did not have to ratify the 13th Amendment in order to reenter the Union. Congress could not oppose his plan because they were on recess. Under this plan former Southern Confederate leaders were elected to Congress. Congressional leaders like Thaddeus Stevens rejected this plan upon their return to Congress.

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln as president held a loose construction of the Constitution when it came to the powers of the president. He believed that the Constitution gave him a wide range of powers including the power to pardon. He did not believe that it was constitutional for Southern states to leave the Union and therefore had never left. Individual people rather than the states themselves had rebelled. He supported lenient terms for reentry to the Union.

Lincoln's Assassination

Lincoln's assassination opened up a power vacuum on who should be in charge of Reconstruction. Andrew Johnson believed that he should be charge of Reconstruction. Johnson battled with Congress which believed that the 10% Plan and Johnson's plan for Reconstruction were too lenient.

10% Plan

Lincoln's plan for Reconstruction, also known as the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. With the exception of high ranking officials and those accused of war crimes, all soldiers would be pardoned if they swore allegiance to the Union. After 10% of a Confederate state had sworn the oath of allegiance it could form a new state government and regain representation in Congress.

Lynching

Lynching is an execution carried out by citizens after an alleged offense with or without a legal trial, normally by hanging. After the end of Reconstruction lynching African Americans increased. Between 1890 and 1899 an average of 154 people were lynched every year in the United States. Many people who were lynched were people who stood against the disenfranchisement of blacks and segregation.

Andrew Johnson

Only Senator from a Southern state to remain loyal to the Union. He was a strong Unionist. Strongly disliked wealthy Southern plantation owners whom he held responsible for dragging poor whites into the war. He was a former slave owner who supported abolition. He strongly opposed the equality of the races and did not believe the government should run and fund programs to support and assist freedmen.

"40 Acres and a Mule"

Originally created by Sherman during the Civil War, this plan gave Freedmen a plot of land along the southern land on former plantations. General Oliver Howard, head of the Freedmen's Bureau, continued this plan at the beginning of Reconstruction. People who supported this idea believed that giving Freedmen land would help them be able to support themselves. Other opposed this idea because it required the government to take individuals property without due process. President Andrew Johnson and Congress eventually rejected this plan.

Compromise of 1877

Republicans ran Rutherford B. Hayes who wanted to end Radical Reconstruction against the Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden. Tilden won 184 electoral votes, 1 short of the majority. Voter fraud in 3 states caused a dispute over 20 electoral votes. The House could not make a decision until they created a special 15 person committee. It took four months to decide. The Compromise of 1877 would give Hayes the presidency if the Republicans promised to pull federal troops from the South. Some accused this of being a corrupt bargain. However it is unclear if a bargain was actually made. This marked the final "redemption" of the South by Democrats and the end of Reconstruction.

Booker T. Washington

Prominent black American, born into slavery, who believed that racism would end once blacks acquired useful labor skills and proved their economic value to society. He supported the idea that blacks accept their conditions under segregation while they worked to better themselves individually through education and vocational skills to achieve economic equality. He summed up his views in the Atlanta Compromise. Washington founded Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute and built it into one of the nation's best-known historically black vocational colleges. In 1900, he organized the National Negro Business League to foster black entrepreneurship.

Radical Republicans

Republican faction led by Thaddeus Stevens that wanted to destroy the power of former slave holders. They held the radical beliefs that blacks should be given full citizenship and the right to vote. They supported harsh punishments for Confederate states. They were angered at Lincoln's 10% Plan. They were further outraged when Johnson vetoed the Freeedmen's Bureau and the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

Black codes

Similar to the slaves codes passed before the Civil War, these laws were passed by states to return blacks to a legal state similar to slavery. These laws varied state to state but all sought to reestablish the Southern antebellum lifestyle. They limited blacks rights to owning weapons, testify in court, marrying whites, owning land, and traveling without permits.

Literacy Test

Some Southern states required people to take a test to prove that they could read. Theses tests were long, confusing, and subjective. Test takers were often given a 10 minute time limit to increase the difficulty of the test. These tests were created to prevent African Americans from voting. They also prevented poor whites from voting.

Scalawags

Southerners who worked with the Republicans to rebuild the South. Other Southerners viewed these people as traitors to the "cause" and the ideas of the Confederacy. This is an old Scot-Irish term that means worthless, weak animal.

Freedman

Term for a person who was a former slave.

The "New South"

The South did start to change during reconstruction and the economy began a slow recovery. Tobacco soon replaced cotton. Most of the South was able to return society an antebellum lifestyle. Many states reestablished black codes. White supremacy groups were able to stop many Blacks from voting using terrorist tactics. While the plantation system had ended wealth landowners were able to keep poor white farmers and freedmen in poor conditions through tenant farming and sharecropping.

Amnesty

The act of granting pardon to a large group of people

Presidential Reconstruction

The early period of Reconstruction dictated by Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. These plans supported lenient terms for the reentry of former Confederate states.

Reconstruction

The period after the Civil War where the United States rebuilt the Union (the United States). This time period lasted from 1865 to 1877. During this time period Confederate states were readmitted to the Union. A complicated period of time there were several opinions on how Reconstruction should be carried out.

Disenfranchisement

The state of being deprived of a right or privilege, especially the right to vote. As white Democrats took control of Southern governments they began to pass a series of laws to limit the rights of African Americans. These laws included laws that helped prevent African Americans from voting and legalized segregation. These laws were called Jim Crow Laws.

15th Amendment

This amendment was passed after the Republicans saw the power of the Black vote after their wide turnout for Grant. This amendment declared that the right to vote "shall not be denied . . . on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." By March 1870, enough states had ratified the amendment to make it part of the Constitution. It also allowed Blacks to participate in government for the first time.

NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)

This association was founded in 1909 by white progressives and black leaders. It worked to abolish segregation and discrimination, to oppose racism and to gain civil rights for African Americans, and also worked to bring cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. It seeks to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of minority group citizens of United States and eliminate race prejudice. The NAACP works to remove all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes.

Radical Reconstruction

This was highlighted by extending citizenship and rights to African Americans. Under Radical Reconstruction Blacks were able to participate in government. They passed the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 and supported the extension of the Freedmen's Bureau. During their rule some of the black codes were repealed and schools were established.

Talented Tenth

W.E.B. Dubois' concept of an elite group of college educated African-Americans who would use their talents and position to eradicate segregation in American society and develop new strategies to advocate for civil rights. Du Bois believed that one in ten blacks had the talent to be a leader in the black community. These leaders should get a liberal arts education which would help bring respect and equality to all blacks.

Sharecroppers

a farmer who works land for an owner who provides equipment, supplies, and seeds and receives a share of their crop. They often gave the land owner half or two-thirds of their crops. Sharecroppers often had to buy more supplies on credit at the local store. Land owners often took advantage of the sharecroppers and told them that their crops did not cover the cost of supplies and materials. This lead to the sharecropping cycle of debt and meant that many sharecroppers entered into debt peonage.

Tenant Farmers

a farmer who works land owned by another and pays rent either in cash or crops. Tenant farmers were often poor whites or Freedmen who rented land from a wealthy land owner or former plantation owner. Some tenant farmers were able to earn enough to buy their own farms but most became sharecroppers.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

an African American journalist and newspaper editor who shed light on the condition of blacks in the South. An early leader in the civil rights movement, she documented the extent of lynching in the United States. She was also active in the women's rights movement and the women's suffrage movement. Her activities laid the groundwork for the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign. A staunch critic of Booker T. Washington, Wells-Barnett helped organize the NAACP.

Mary Church Terrell

an educator and advocate for women's and civil rights, was born in Memphis into a prosperous family. In 1896 she founded the National Association of Colored Women. She was also active in the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She helped to form the NAACP. Terrell also formed the Women Wage Earner's Association, which assisted black nurses, waitresses, and domestic workers. She also led a boycott against department stores in Washington D.C. that refused to serve African Americans.

Crop liens

an obligation placed on a farmer to repay a debt with crops.

Debt peonage

the condition of sharecroppers who could not pay off their debts, and therefore, could not leave the property the worked. This lead many sharecroppers into an economic system of slavery, rather than a legal slavery. States also passed laws to ensure that debtors could not legally leave the land without the permission of the land owner.