Civil War and Reconstruction (1861-1877)

Vocabulary

Make sure you write the title "Civil War and Reconstruction” at the top of your page. These vocabulary words should be written on notebook paper that you will turn in.

  1. Missouri Compromise – An agreement by Congress that allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state and Maine to enter as a free state.
  2. abolitionist – one who wanted to abolish slavery in the US as soon as possible.
  3. NC Manumission Society – an organization formed by Quakers in the Uwharries that raised money to buy slaves from their masters and grant them freedom.
  4. secession – the action taken if a state decided to leave the Union.
  5. Compromise of 1850 – an agreement by Congress that allowed California to enter the Union as a free state, but guaranteed the protection of slavery with a stronger fugitive slave law that ordered every American citizen to return escaped slaves.
  6. Kansas-Nebraska Act - 1854 Act of Congress that repealed the Missouri Compromise and introduced as the guiding principle behind the incorporation of the Kansas and Nebraska Territories the idea of popular sovereignty (citizens decide).
  7. Dred Scott Decision (Scott v. Sandford)–a court case involving a slave Dred Scott and his owner, John Sandford. Scott sued Sandford claiming he was a free person after being in free territory.Chief Justice Roger Taney, in an 1857 plurality opinion, said that African-Americans could never become United States citizens and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. Further, the Court said, Congress could not constitutionally exclude slavery from the territories.
  8. Confederate States of America – the government formed by the southern states that seceded from the Union in the early 1860s.
  9. Copperhead – a northerner who opposed using force to keep the southern states in the Union.
  10. conscription – to force to join the military; being drafted
  11. Reconstruction (1865-1877) -– the steps taken to restore the southern states to the Union and rebuild the South.
  12. freedmen – the newly freed slaves.
  13. black codes – a series of laws passed during Reconstruction that recognized some rights of the freedmen but also denied freedmen many rights that whites took for granted.
  14. Scalawags – a nickname for southern whiteswho opposed secession.
  15. Carpetbagger – a nickname for a northern white who went to the South after the Civil War to start a business or pursue a political career.
  16. universal manhood suffrage – the ability of all men over the age of 21 to vote regardless of their color or their economic status.
  17. segregate – to separate by race.
  18. Ku-Klux-Klan – a secret and racist organization whose purpose was to return political and social control to native whites.
  19. Kirk-Holden War – Gov. Holden’s use of NC militia to stop the Klan from taking over key places in the state.
  20. impeach – to file charges against a public official for wrongdoing while in office.
  21. 13th Amendment(December 6, 1865) - made slavery and involuntary servitude illegal everywhere in the United States.
  22. 14th Amendment (July 9, 1868) - defines what it means to be a US citizen and protects certain rights of the people.
  23. 15th Amendment (February 3, 1870) - protects the voting rights of all citizens regardless of race or the color of their skin.
  24. Freedmen’s Bureau – a federal agency set up by Congress in 1865 to provide food, clothing, shelter, and education for the former slaves.
  25. Plessy v Ferguson (1896) - a legal case in which the Supreme Court decided that "separate but equal" facilities satisfied the guarantees of 14th Amendment.
  26. sharecropping – an arrangement where a landowner and a renter split the proceeds from selling the crop raised on the rented land.

PEOPLE TO KNOW

  1. General Braxton Bragg – highest ranking officer from NC during the Civil War. Ft. Bragg is named after him.
  2. Zebulon B. Vance– Governor of NC during the Civil War.
  3. Andrew Johnson –born in Raleigh, NC, he became the 17th President of the US when Lincoln was assassinated.
  4. Henry Clay – a senator from Kentucky who gained the nickname the Great Compromiser because of his work on the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850.
  5. John C. Calhoun – a US Senator from SC and defender of slavery.
  6. Daniel Webster – a US Senator from Massachusetts who wanted to save the Union and did not want the Civil War to be fought.
  7. Harriet Beecher Stow – author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which illustrated slavery’s effect on families.
  8. Stephen Douglass–a US Senator from Illinois who ran against Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election and believed in popular sovereignty.
  9. John Brown – an abolitionist who led a slave uprising in Virginia.
  10. Jefferson Davis – president of the Confederate States of America.
  11. John Wilkes Booth – the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.
  12. Hiram Revels – born in Fayetteville, NC, he was the first African American Congressman (Mississippi).
  13. Blanche K. Bruce – the first African American to serve a full term in the US Senate (Mississippi).
  14. John Adams Hyman – the state’s first African American representative in Congress.