Reconstruction Vocabulary
1. Amnesty: the granting of pardon to a large number of persons: protection from prosecution for an illegal act
2. Reconstruction: the reorganization and rebuilding of the former Confederate states after the Civil War
3. Black Codes: laws passed in the South just after the Civil War aimed at controlling freedmen and enabling plantation owners to exploit African American workers
4. Impeach: to formally charge and remove a public official with misconduct in office
5. Thirteenth Amendment: slavery may not exist within the United States
6. Fourteenth Amendment: gave full citizenship to all people born in the United States, giving equal protection of the laws
7. Fifteenth Amendment: prohibited the government from denying the right to vote to any male citizen because of their race, color, or former status as slaves
8. Carpetbaggers: name given to Northern whites who moved South after the Civil War and supported the Republicans
9. Freedman: a person freed from slavery
10. Ku Klux Klan: secret society that used fear and violence to deny rights to freedmen and women, and keep Republicans and freedman out of office
11. Literacy Test: a method used to prevent African Americans from voting by requiring prospective voters to read and write at a specified level
12. Lynching: putting to death a person by the illegal action of a mob
13. Poll Tax: a tax of a fixed amount per person that had to be paid before the person could vote
14. Radical Reconstruction: Republicans take control of Reconstruction to extend the rights of 13th , 14th, and 15th amendments, which were being denied to Freedmen
15. Scalawag: name given b former Confederates to Southern whites who supported Republican Reconstruction of the South
16. Segregation: the separation or isolation of a race, class, or group
17. Sharecropping: system of farming in which a farmer works land for an owner who provides equipment and seeds and receives a share of the crop