APUSH: Give Me Liberty Chapter 15

"waving the bloody shirt"

Republicans identified their opponents with secession and treason, a tactic known as "waving the bloody shirt"

Bargain of 1877

The Compromise of 1877 was a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election. It resulted in the national government pulling the last federal troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era.

the Freedmen's Bureau

an agency established by Congress in March 1865, to attempt to establish a working free labor system Under the direction of O. O. Howard. Bureau agents were supposed to establish schools, provide aid to the poor and aged, settle disputes between whites and black and among the freed people, and secure for former slaves and white Unionists equal treatment before the court. It was not successful economically: there were many disputes over land distribution

woman suffrage

focus on liberty for married women, the right of divorce, control over their own body moved to feminists' central concerns

Civil Rights Bill of 1866

it defined all persons born in the US as citizens and spelled out rights they were to enjoy without regard to race. No longer could states enact laws like the Black Codes

Black Codes

laws passed by the new southern governments that attempted to regulate the lives of the former slaves. These laws granted blacks certain rights, such as legalized marriage, ownership of property, and limited access to the courts. But they denied them the rights to testify against whites, to serve on juries or in state militias. Those who failed to sign yearly labor contracts could be arrested and hired out to white landowners.

Civil Rights Act of 1875

outlawed racial discrimination in places of public accommodation like hotels and theaters

Enforcement Acts

outlawed terrorist societies and allowed the president to use the army against them

Fourteenth Amendment

placed in the Constitution the principle of citizenship for all person born in the US and which empowered the federal government to protect the rights of all Americans

Fifteenth Amendment

prohibited the federal and state governments from denying any citizen the right to vote because of race. Bitterly opposed by the Democratic Party, it was ratified in 1870

Ku Klux Klan

served as a military arm of the Democratic Party in the South. It was a terrorist organization. Victims included white Republicans and African Americans

The Reconstruction Act

temporarily divided the South into 5 military districts and called for the creation of new state governments, with black men given the right to vote. Thus began the period of Radical Reconstruction

Colfax Massacre

the bloodies act of violence during reconstruction took place in Colfax LA in 1873 where armed whites assaulted the town with a small cannon . Hundreds of former slaves were murdered, including 50 members of a black militia unit after they had surrendered

sharecropping

the system in which a black family was able to rent a part of a plantation, with the crop divided between worker and owner at the end of the year. It came to dominate the Cotton Belt and much of the Tobacco Belt of VA and NC. It initially arose as a compromise between blacks' desire for land and planters' demand for labor discipline

Redeemers

the victorious Democrats called themselves Redeemers since they claimed to have "redeemed" the white South from Corruption, misgovernment, and northern and black control

carpetbaggers and scalawags

their opponents named them carpetbaggers implying that they had packed all their belongings in a suitcase and left their homes in order to reap the spoils of office in the South. Southern republicans were named scalawags by former confederates whom they considered traitor to their race and region

crop-lien system

to obtain supplies for merchants, farmers were forced to take up the growing of cotton and pledge a part of the crop as a collateral (property the creditor can seize if a debt is not paid).

Slaughterhouse Cases

Butchers excluded rom a state-sponsored monopoly in LA went to court, claiming that their right to equality before the law guaranteed by the 14th amendments had been violated. The justices rejected their claim, ruling that the amendment had not altered traditional federalism. Most of the rights of citizens, ti declared, remained under state control.