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U.S. History

Key Terms

U.S. HistoryKey Terms

Key Terms

Black codes
laws some southern states designed to maintain White supremacy by keeping freed people impoverished and in debt
carpetbagger
a term used for northerners working in the South during Reconstruction; it implied that these were opportunists who came south for economic or political gain
Compromise of 1877
the agreement between Republicans and Democrats, after the contested election of 1876, in which Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the presidency in exchange for withdrawing the last of the federal troops from the South
crop-lien system
a loan system in which store owners extended credit to farmers for the purchase of goods in exchange for a portion of their future crops
Freedmen’s Bureau
the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, which was created in 1865 to ease Black peoples’ transition from slavery to freedom
Ironclad Oath
an oath that the Wade-Davis Bill required a majority of voters and government officials in Confederate states to take; it involved swearing that they had never supported the Confederacy
Ku Klux Klan
a White vigilante organization that engaged in terroristic violence with the aim of stopping Reconstruction
Radical Republicans
northern Republicans who contested Lincoln’s treatment of Confederate states and proposed harsher punishments
Reconstruction
the twelve-year period after the Civil War in which the rebel Southern states were integrated back into the Union
redeemers
a term used for southern White people committed to rolling back the gains of Reconstruction
scalawags
a pejorative term used for southern White people who supported Reconstruction
sharecropping
a crop-lien system in which people paid rent on land they farmed (but did not own) with the crops they grew
ten percent plan
Lincoln’s Reconstruction plan, which required only 10 percent of the 1860 voters in Confederate states to take an oath of allegiance to the Union
Union Leagues
fraternal groups loyal to the Union and the Republican Party that became political and civic centers for Black people in former Confederate states
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