Civil War, Reconstruction, And Jim Crow APUSH Test
Reconstruction Failures
1. Racism embedded in culture. 2. Budgets for black children's schools was one-twelfth of that of white children's schools. 3. Violence during voting. 4. Debt peonage. 5. K.K.K. Terrorism 6. Government corruption. 7. Race riots. 8. One party rule.
Restoration
President Andrew Johnson's plan for Reconstruction. To be readmitted to Congress, states had to revoke their ordinance of secession, abolish slavery and ratify the 13th Amendment, and repudiate Confederate and state war debts.
"The New Jim Crow" C. Vann Woodward
Race relations were fluid (there were lots of informal relationships). Blacks were on juries, legislatures, and public accommodations. Entrenched segregation not until 1902.
First Confiscation Act
This authorized Union seizure of rebel property, and it stated that all slaves who fought with or worked for the Confederate military services were freed of further obligations to their masters.
Civil Rights Act Of 1866
This bill declared blacks to be citizens of the United States and gave the federal government power to intervene in state affairs to protect the rights of citizens. 17th United States President Andrew Johnson vetoed this bill.
Meaning Of Freedom For Blacks
1. Freedom from slavery. 2. Civil Rights. 3. Autonomous Communities (Churches, societies, schools, etc.). 4. Economic autonomy. 5. Political independence. 6. Power over one's life and family.
Lincoln's Views On Secession
Lincoln said that he did not support secession and that anyone who contributed to the Confederate cause was guilty of insurrection. He also carefully avoided saying that the South had seceded, he merely said that they rebelled.
Colfax Massacre
On April 13, Easter Sunday, 1873, approximately 150 black men were murdered by white Southerners in Louisiana.
General/President Ulysses S. Grant
The 18th President of the United States of America, he presided over the Reconstruction United States. He was also general of the Union Army from the middle to the end of the Civil War. Before he became Union general, his platoon was ambushed at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. His presidency was filled with scandal and corruption. He entered the office unprepared for the position. His cabinet was involved in several scandals.
Readmission Of Southern States
States could be readmitted to the Union after following Lincoln's 10% plan, instituting Lincoln (really Johnson) governments, and ratifying the 13th Amendment.
Meaning Of Freedom For Whites
1. Control over their own destiny with no Northern/federal interference. 2. Re-establish antebellum society. 3. White supremacy enforced through Social Darwinism and eugenics. 4. Segregation to "ensure peace." 5. "New South, but old Negro."
Reconstruction Successes
1. Political participation of blacks for a decade. 2. Universal manhood suffrage. 3. 22 African-American members of Congress. 4. Increased literacy rate. 5. Public schools. 6. Hospitals, penitentiaries, and asylums. 7. Black Institutions. 8. Liberalized state constitutions.
Johnson Impeachment
After passing the Tenure of Office Act (1867) that denied the president powers used by previous presidents to fire officials at any time, President Andrew Johnson fired President Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. The Republicans immediately moved to try him for impeachment on 11 articles of high crimes and misdemeanors. Johnson avoided impeachment by one vote.
Booker T. Washington
An activist for African Americans, he was a black progressive who supported segregation and demanded that African Americans better themselves individually to achieve equality. He later founded a historically black college in Alabama, the Tuskegee Institute.
W.E.B. DuBois
An activist for civil rights, he was the first black person to earn Ph.D. from Harvard. He encouraged blacks to resist systems of segregation and discrimination and he helped create NAACP in 1910. He said, "Am I an American, or a Negro? Can I be both?"
The End Of Reconstruction
Brought around by the Compromise of 1876, this halted Republican intervention in the post-War development of the South. This allowed for the Black Codes to become prominent and for radical racism to rule over the Southern states.
Southern Guerilla War
Former Confederates wanted to attack the Union troops occupying the South in ambush attacks.
Lincoln's Views On African Americans
He considered blacks to be people with unalienable rights, but he understood that he could not take care of ensuring civil rights because the process was tricky and would take longer than the time he had left in the White House.
Lincoln And Congress
He rarely consulted Congress and made decisions on his own through executive orders.
Lincoln's Plan For Reconstruction
He wanted a union between the North and South, not the animosity the war had wrought between the two halves of the nation. He proposed a 10% plan. It would make it easy for the South to come back into the Union. 1 out of 10 male southerners had to swear loyalty to the United States.
Thomas Nast
He was a harsh critic of Reconstruction policies. He used allegory to bring acts of hate groups to the public's attention. He was a lifetime advocate for the abolition of slavery and for racial equality.
General George C. McClellan
He was the general of the Union Army at various points throughout the War and ran for president in 1864 against the incumbent Lincoln. McClellan was a racist and pro-slavery, so it is very likely that he would have ended the war right away if he was elected, keeping slavery in the South, perhaps even expanding it, which would only lead to more conflicts similar to the Civil War, itself.
Proclamation Of Amnesty And Reconstruction
Here, Lincoln offered a full pardon to Southerners who would take oath of allegiance to the Union and acknowledge emancipation.
Surrender At Appomattox Courthouse
Here, on April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant and the Union Army. Lee implored the Southern Army to surrender with dignity and to not participate in guerilla warfare against the Union troops that would occupy the South after that for Reconstruction.
Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address
In this speech, Abraham Lincoln expressed the evils of slavery, but he also explained that after the war, the North and South cannot view each other as enemies if the nation is to survive. He wanted the North to react to winning the war "With malice towards none, charity for all."
Lincoln's First Inaugural Address
In this speech, Abraham Lincoln insisted that acts of force or violence to support secession were insurrectionary and that government would "hold, occupy, and possess" federal property in the seceded states.
Lincoln's 10% Plan
States could return to the union after 10% of their male population had signed allegiance to the Union. The state then had to form a new government, write a new constitution, and ratify the 13th Amendment for readmission, as well, under this plan.
Sharecropping
Invented by the crop lien system, this was a very feudal system of employment. In exchange for letting people live on their land, land owners received a portion of each of their sharecropper's, or tenant's, harvest. This system imprisoned many blacks and poor whites because they were often unable to pay off their debts to their landlords and were thusly stuck on the land.
Lincoln Assassination
John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C. during a performance of "Our American Cousin" on April 14, 1865 and the president died the next morning, April 15, 1865. There was also an attempt on the life of Secretary of State William Henry Seward, but he survived the attack. This put Vice-President Andrew Johnson as president. Booth, a renowned actor (whose brother Edwin Booth, widely considered the greatest American actor of the 19th Century, incidentally saved the life of President Lincoln's son, Robert Lincoln, on a separate occasion), was a Southern radical.
Lincoln Governments
Lincoln wanted new governments formed in Southern states composed of Northerners, so that Reconstruction could happen under a Republican agenda. These new governments were also called "Loyal Assemblies," and they were formed in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas.
William Henry Seward
Lincoln's Secretary of State, he was one of Lincoln's most trusted advisors and he helped bring around the passing of the 13th Amendment. He also was responsible for the purchasing of the Midway Islands, and he was responsible for the purchasing of the future state of Alaska from Russia.
Frederick Douglass
Possibly the most famous abolitionist, he was a writer who grew up a slave. He never believed that the newly freed slaves at the end of the War were truly free because they had little money, property, or rights. He made the 1875 quote, "If war among the whites brought peace and liberty to the blacks, what will peace among the whites bring?"
Gettysburg Address
President Abraham Lincoln gave this speech on November 19, 1863 as a precursor to a campaign speech for Edward Everett. The speech implied that the North was fighting the South over slavery, and that that was a moral cause.
Consequences For Confederate Leaders
Some were pardoned, some had to sign pledge their allegiance to the Union and to upholding the 13th Amendment, while some, such as Confederate President Jefferson Davis, were thrown in prison for short periods of time (Davis was in jail on accusations of treason for roughly two years). Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens was one of the Confederate leaders who was pardoned and reinstated.
Eugenics And Social Darwinism
Southern whites used these pseudosciences to justify their claims that blacks were not equal to whites and were inferior, according to science. They believed that Reconstruction empowered the same black people they considered lesser than themselves. The people who subscribed to these beliefs considered educating black people a waste of time because they were incapable of learning as much or as well as whites.
Corruption In The Grant Administration
The 'Whiskey Ring' and corruption in the Naval Department brought great trouble to this administration and detracts from this president's reputation. This administration, including the cabinet, suffered many scandals, leading to continuous reshuffling of officials.
President Abraham Lincoln
The 16th President of the United States of America, he presided over the U.S. during the Civil War. At first he did not want to interfere with slavery where it existed, but by the time he became president, he was willing to fight the South over it. Eventually he decided that he wanted to emancipate the slaves. Not only was this a moral cause, but he also thought that it might incentivize freed slaves to fight for the Union, it might gain European support, and avoid potential post-War conflict over slavery. He put all the moral oppositions to the institution of slavery in the Gettysburg Address. He thought that some black people should be able to vote, for he wanted to protect blacks, but he understood that civil protections would be difficult to achieve. He never said that the South left the Union, merely that they rebelled unsuccessfully. He enacted a pocket veto on the Wade-Davis Bill. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865, and he died the next morning on April 15, 1865.
President Andrew Johnson
The 17th President of the United States of America, he presided over the U.S. at the beginning of Reconstruction. He infamously vetoed more bills than any president in history combined to that point. He was a Southern Democrat who hated the Southern planter class. He had members of that class come into the Oval Office and beg him personally to keep their land. He was an avowed racist and had little favor for helping the freed slaves. He wanted to give the South some amnesty; also he wanted each reinstated Southern state to have their own individual state governments, again. His plan for Reconstruction was called "Restoration."
General Robert E. Lee
The General of the Confederate Army, he hailed from Virginia. He was initially asked to hold the same position, but for the Union Army, however he declined because he felt he could not fight against his home of Virginia. While the South was staunchly for slavery, he was not.
African Americans In The Union Army
There were 88 black commanding officers and 16 black Medal of Honor winners in the Civil War. This suggests that black people might have been more important than 16th President Abraham Lincoln in the emancipation of the slaves. Led by white General Robert Gould Shaw, the 54th Massachusetts was an all-black regiment that was killed in a charge in South Carolina.
Establishment Of Historically Black Colleges
These helped to further black education in the South because they were places for black people to learn unobstructed and to learn using usually better facilities than those that they might have had in non-college schools. One example of these is the school Booker T. Washington established, the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
Contrabands Of War
The Union Army decided that they would not return escaped slaves. This refers to goods that were imported or exported illegally, specifically during the American Civil War.
Civil Rights Cases Of 1883
The United States Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which had prohibited racial discrimination in hotels, trains, and other public places, was unconstitutional. This legalized segregation.
4 Million Freed Slaves
These people had nowhere to go at the end of the war, most had no education, and most had no money. The federal government established the Freedmen's Bureau in 1865 to help integrate these people into society as successful, productive members of it.
Radical Republicans
These people were the abolitionists in government who abhorred slavery and wanted it gone immediately. They viewed the South as conquered territory. They wanted revenge on the South, to protect black rights, to protect black suffrage, to redistribute white land to freed blacks, and to punish and disenfranchise the South.
Black Codes
These resulted in a revival of Southern defiance. These guaranteed a stable labor supply now that blacks were emancipated, and resulted in a great need for the freed blacks to sharecrop. These were essentially the slave codes, but rewritten to fit the post-War South. These authorized local officials to apprehend unemployed blacks, fine them for vagrancy, and hire them out to employers to satisfy their various small or outstanding debts. Some of these stopped blacks from obtaining any job except those that a slave would have done. These also resulted in harsher punishments for blacks for smaller crimes, as well as public lynchings.
Slaughterhouse Cases Of 1873
The city of New Orleans, Louisiana began finding hog waste in their water. A slaughterhouse was throwing their hog offal into the river, the very same river that New Orleans used for its main water source. The Supreme Court ruled that the state could move the business to better the people of New Orleans. they ruled that state governments could move and regulate private businesses. Due to this, states could legally and constitutionally deny blacks the right to own a business.
South After The War
The economy perished and was absolutely devastated (66% of Southern wealth was lost). The freed blacks had nowhere to go. Whites were totally broke and disenfranchised. Union troops remained to help start the new Reconstruction. 20-25% of white males in the South had died, which was roughly 4% of the Southern population.
Compromise Of 1876
The election came down to an unclear vote, with a close tie between the two candidates, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. Since the vote was unclear, the Democrats and Republicans cut a deal that Hayes would become president, but Hayes would have to appoint at least one Southerner to his cabinet, the Democrats wanted control of federal patronage in their areas, generous internal improvements, federal aid for the Texas and Pacific Railroad, and they wanted the remaining federal troops to withdraw from the South, thus ending Reconstruction.
Can "Stateways" Change "Folkways?"
The idea that laws could change social predispositions and stereotypes people had about black people.
"Lost Cause"
The phrase many white southerners applied to their Civil War defeat. They viewed the war as a noble cause but only a temporary setback in the South's ultimate vindication.
Black Senate And House Delegates
There were 22 African-American members of Congress during Reconstruction, but after the Compromise of 1876 put an end to Reconstruction and let the Black Codes govern the South, fewer and fewer blacks were able to vote, so fewer and fewer black candidates won elections.
Enforcement Acts Of 1870 And 1871
These were criminal codes which protected African-Americans' right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and receive equal protection of laws. They were created in response to white supremacist terrorism in the South, from groups such as the Knights of White Camellia, the Red Shirts, the White Leagues, and, most notably, the Ku Klux Klan, otherwise known as the K.K.K.
Plessy V. Ferguson
This Supreme Court decision legalized segregation as long as the facilities for blacks and whites were equal. The Court decided that segregation did not in itself constitute unlawful discrimination.
The Jim Crow Era
This arose after Reconstruction ended in 1876 and set the Civil Rights Movement back decades, halting any progress for race relations. During this time, the Black Codes governed the South, and the periods surrounding this time allowed for white supremacist terrorist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, to run rampant.
Antietam (1862)
This battle was the first time General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army invaded the North. This is known as the bloodiest days in American history. The South's failure at this battle caused England to decide against supporting the South. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation after this battle.
Panic Of 1873
This began with the failure of a leading investment banking firm, Jay Cooke and company, which had invested too heavily in railroad building. Debtors pressured the government to redeem federal war bonds with greenbacks (paper money), which would increase the amount of money in circulation.
Wade-Davis Bill
This bill was drafted by Republican senator from Ohio Benjamin Wade and Republican senator from Maryland Henry W. Davis. It required 50% of the number of 1860 voters to take an oath swearing that they had never participated in the rebellion. It required a state constitutional convention before the election of state officials. It also enacted specific safeguards of freedmen's liberties. Lincoln enacted a pocket veto on this bill.
Tenancy And The Crop Lien System
This created sharecropping in the South. This trapped Southern blacks into loads of economic downpour because sharecroppers, or tenants, could rarely earn enough money during the year to pay off all their debts to their landowner and move off the land to buy land of their own or move. This also created tenantry which hurt blacks the most. This benefited landlords by relieving them of the cost of purchasing slaves and of the responsibility of maintaining the physical well-being of their workers, while still taking in a share of the crop the tenants produced.
First Reconstruction Act Of 1867
This defined the terms for Reconstruction, and being drafted by the radical Republicans in Congress, did not support the Southern wants of that time. It helped split the 10 Southern states that had not been readmitted to the Union into five military districts.
Civil Rights Act Of 1875
This ensured that it was a crime for any individual to deny another individual full and equal use of public conveyances and public places based on the terms expressed in the 15th Amendment. This prohibited discrimination in jury selection. This was never enforced and it was the last civil rights act even proposed for 82 years until the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which established the Civil Rights Commission.
Command Of The Army Act
This ensured that the president could not issue military orders, unless they were approved by the commanding general of the United States' Army.
15th Amendment
This forbade states from denying suffrage to any citizen on account of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
Tenure Of Office Act
This forbade the president to remove civil officials (including his own cabinet) without the consent of the Senate.
14th Amendment
This offered the first constitutional definition of citizenship: Everyone born in the United States would be a citizen. This also punished the states who denied suffrage to all their citizens. This barred federal/congressional officials who had aided the Confederates from holding any state or federal office until two-thirds of Congress voted to pardon them.
Cruickshank V. The United States Of 1876
This overturned federal convictions of murder committed by white men (the Colfax Massacre) on the grounds that it was a state matter and that the federal government had no power or jurisdiction, there. This caused the Supreme Court to declare the Enforcement Acts unconstitutional and that the 14th Amendment applied only to state actions, not the actions of individuals.
Homestead Act (1862)
This permitted any citizen or prospective citizen to purchase 160 acres of public land for a small fee after living in it for five years.
Industrialization
This resulted in tax breaks for the wealthy, leaving less money available for social programs which deepened the economic downpour in the poor South. This caused more poor whites and more blacks to sharecrop.
Second Confiscation Act
This stated that any Confederate official, military or civilian, who did not surrender within 60 days of the act's passage would have their slaves freed in criminal proceedings.
Ku Klux Klan
This terrorist group had two peaks (one in the 1860s and the second being in the 1920s). The first iteration died out due to un-necessity when Jim Crow arose. They made many efforts to prevent blacks from voting and to disenfranchise blacks through intimidation (lynchings and similar acts of violence) and policy change, such as instituting the Black Codes.
Gettysburg (1863)
This three-day battle was the second and last time the South invaded the North. This is known as America's bloodiest battle. On the third day, after General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's 20th Maine regiment held back Confederate troops at the edge of the Union line, the North started to turn the tide of the war in their favor.
13th Amendment
This took the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and changed it so that the slaves would immediately be freed in all states, not just the ten that were in rebellion during the Civil War.
Morrill Act (1862)
This transferred substantial public acreage to the state governments, which could now sell the land and use the proceeds to finance public education. This led to the creation of many new state colleges and universities, the so-called land-grant institutions.
Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
This was an executive order freeing the slaves in all states where the Union did not have control. Lincoln was able to pass this due to presidential wartime powers, which he also used to suspend habeas corpus. The only potential issue with this was that some of the border states that remained in the Union still had slaves, but by the end of the war, this was no longer a problem because all the slaves were emancipated.
"Loyal Assemblies"
This was another name for the Lincoln governments.
The Bureau Of Colored Troops
This was created in 1863 to handle "all matters relating to the organization of colored troops."
Freedmen's Bureau
This was established in March of 1865 and it distributed food, set up schools (for both blacks and whites), established black men as the head of the household, and gave some effort to give blacks land. Many Northern abolitionists risked their lives to help blacks for their cause for freedom.
Indian Wars
This was series of conflicts in the latter half of the 19th Century between the U.S. Army and U.S. settlers and different Native American tribes over land disputes which resulted in the mass killing of millions of Native Americans and the destruction of their homelands. The most notable battle is the last Native American victory, the Battle of Little Bighorn, otherwise known as "Custer's Last Stand."
Ku Klux Klan Acts
This was the nickname for the Enforcement Acts.
Loyal Rule
This was to replace majority rule in the South so that only those who had pledged their loyalty to the Union could vote.
Habeas Corpus
This writ required an imprisoned person to be brought before a judge quickly after imprisonment. Lincoln used his wartime powers to suspend this during the Civil War, so the Union army could keep prisoners of war imprisoned until such time as the war ended or the South wanted negotiate the prisoners' release.
Post-Civil War Voting
Until after the 1876 election, blacks in the South had incredibly high black voter turnout rates, even reaching 100% in South Carolina, but after Reconstruction ended, those numbers dropped drastically to the twenties and teens by 1912.
Carpetbaggers
White men from the North, most of them veterans of the Union Army who looked on the South as a more promising frontier than the West and had settled there at the end of the War as hopeful planters, businessmen, or professionals looking to profit off of the South.