APUSH Ch. 15

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Wade- Davis Bill: Bill declared that the Reconstruction of the South was a legislative, not executive, matter. It was an attempt to weaken the power of the president. Lincoln vetoed it. Wade-Davis Manifesto said Lincoln was acting like a dictator by vetoing
Edwin M. Stanton: As Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton acted as a spy for the radicals in cabinet meetings. President Johnson asked him to resign in 1867. The dismissal of Stanton let to the impeachment of Johnson because Johnson had broken the Tenure of Office Law.
sharecropping: Freed blacks in the South usually became tenants of white landowners; that is, they worked their own plots of land and paid their landlords either a fixed rent or a share of their crop.
enforcement acts: were seldom enforced, but they were produced to discourage Klan violence, which declined by 1872.
Command of the Army Act: prohibited the president from issuing military orders except through the commanding general of the army (General Grant), who could not be relieved or assigned elsewhere without the consent of the Senate.
Credit Moblier/ Schuyler Colfax: A Construction Company owned by the larger stockholders of the Union Pacific Railroad. After Union Pacific received the government contract to build the transcontinental railroad, it "hired" Credit Mobilier to do the actual construction, charging the federal government nearly twice the actual cost of the project. When the scheme was discovered, the company tried to bribe Congress with gifts of stock to stop the investigation, which some highly placed republicans, including Schuyler Colfax (Grant's vice president) had accepted. This precipitated the biggest bribery scandal in U.S. history, and led to greater public awareness of government corruption.
Presidential Reconstruction/ Restoration: reconstruction under Johnson's plan, continued only until Congress reconvened in December 1865.
Freedmens Aid Societies: sent missionaries and teachers to the south to staff schools and establish other private and church groups in the North.
national greenback party: Founded in 1878, the party was primarily composed of prairie farmers who went into debt during the Panic of 1873. The Party fought for increased monetary circulation through issuance of paper currency and bimetallism (using both gold and silver as legal tender), supported inflationary programs in the belief that they would benefit debtors, and sought benefits for labor such as shorter working hours and a national labor bureau. They had the support of several labor groups and they wanted the government to print more greenbacks.
Abraham Lincoln assasination: While sitting in his box at Ford's Theatre watching "Our American Cousin", President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who planned with others for six months to abduct Lincoln at the start of the war, but they were foiled when Lincoln didn't arrive at the scheduled place. On April 14, 1865, he shot Lincoln at Ford's Theatre and cried, "Sic Semper Tyrannis!" ("Thus always to tyrants!") When he jumped down onto the stage his spur caught in the American flag draped over the balcony and he fell and broke his leg. He escaped on a waiting horse and fled town. He was found several days later in a barn. He refused to come out; the barn was set on fire. Booth was shot, either by himself or a soldier.
impeachment/ Andrew Johnson: means to bring charges against a public official. Johnson was impeached by Radical Republicans who claimed that he had dismissed Secretary of War Stanton despite Congresses' refusal to agree, but in the senate he was saved from being taken out of office by one vote.
Freedmen's Burrea/ Oliver O. Howard: Agency set up, and run by General Oliver O. Howard, to give aid former slaves in adjusting themselves to freedom. It furnished food and clothing to needy blacks and helped them get jobs.
J. Cooke and Company: financial crisis began with the failure of this leading investment banking firm, which had invested too heavily in the postwar railroad building, leading to the worst panic yet.
Panic of 1873: Unrestrained speculation on the railroads let to disaster - inflation and strikes by railroad workers. 18,000 businesses failed and 3 million people were out of work. Federal troops were called in to end the strike.
Henry Grady: editor of the Atlanta Constitution, and other New South advocates seldom challenged white supremacy, but they did promote the virtues of thrift, industry, and progress - qualities that prewar southerners had often denounced in northern society.
Redeemers/ Bourbons: in some areas of the south Redeemers or Bourbons constituted the new ruling class, and consisted of merchants, industrialists, railroad developers, and financiers, some were former planters, northern immigrants, or ambitious, upwardly mobile white southerners form the lower social tiers, and they combined to create a new southern society and economy.
Civil Rights Act of 1866: Prohibited abridgement of rights of blacks or any other citizens.
X- Parte- milligan: Supreme Court ruled that military trials of civilians were illegal unless the civil courts are inoperative or the region is under marshall law.
Plessy v. Ferguson: a case involving a Louisiana law that required separate seating arrangements for the races on railroads, the Court held that separate accommodations did not deprive blacks of equal rights if the accommodations were equal.
Horace Greeley: a veteran editor and publisher of the New York Tribune, in 1872 he was the candidate of both the liberal Republicans, and the Democrats, who had united with intentions of defeating Grant. Later he began calling himself a Liberal and aligning with Democrats, where he denounced what he viewed as black and carpet bag misgovernment.
Tammany Hall: Political machine in New York, headed by Boss Tweed.
compromise of 1877/ Rutherford B. Hayes/ Sam Tilden: In the election of 1876; Rutherford B. Hayes - liberal Republican, Civil War general, he received only 165 electoral votes. Samuel J. Tilden - Democrat, received 264,000 more popular votes that Hayes, and 184 of the 185 electoral votes needed to win. 20 electoral votes were disputed, and an electoral commission decided that Hayes was the winner - fraud was suspected. So, in the compromise of 1877, Hayes promised to show concern for Southern interests and end Reconstruction in exchange for the Democrats accepting the fraudulent election results. He took Union troops out of the South.
Ku Klux Klan: White-supremacist group formed by six former Confederate officers after the Civil War. Name is essentially Greek for "Circle of Friends". Group eventually turned to terrorist attacks on blacks. The original Klan was disbanded in 1869, but was later resurrected by white supremacists in 1915.
Home rule: the combined commitment that Redeemers and Bourbons to social conservatism and economic development.
Hamilton Fish: member of the Grant administration, he was an able diplomat who peacefully settled conflicts with Great Britain through the Treaty of Washington, in which Canada gave the U.S. permanent fishing rights to the St. Lawrence River.
Liberal Republicans: sought honest government, and the riding of "grantism', so they nominated Greeley as their candidate. The Democratic Party had also chosen Greeley, hoping that Grant would be defeated if they united against him. But Regular Republicans renominated Grant. The Republicans controlled enough Black votes to gain victory for Grant.
Tenure of Office Act: Enacted by radical Congress, it forbade the president from removing civil officers without consent of the Senate. It was meant to prevent Johnson from removing radicals from office. Johnson broke this law when he fired a radical Republican from his cabinet, and he was impeached for this "crime".
David Davis: an independent member of the court delegation for the decision of the 1877 election, but when the Illinois legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate, he resigned from the commission and his seat went instead to a Republican justice, giving the Republicans advantage and allowing Hayes to win the election.
The New South: white southern leaders in the post- Reconstruction era hoped to see their region become the home of a vigorous industrial economy.
Sewards Folly: many criticized William Seward's purchase of Alaska from Russia for 7.2 million dollars, calling it his folly.
Alabama Plains: America's demands in which England pay for the damage that ships sold by England to the Confederacy during the civil war caused; eventually an agreement was forced by Hamilton Fish, in the Treaty of Washington.
carpetbaggers: derogatory term applied to Northerners who migrated south during the Reconstruction to take advantage of opportunities to advance their own fortunes by buying up land from desperate Southerners and by manipulating new black voters to obtain lucrative government contracts.
Cumming v. County Board of Education: in this case, the Court ruled that communities could establish schools for whites only, even if there were no comparable schools for blacks.
14th Amendment: ratified 1868, it fixed provision of the Civil Rights Bill: full citizenship to all native-born or naturalized Americans, including former slaves and immigrants.
Andrew Johnson: A Southerner form Tennessee, as V.P. when Lincoln was killed, he became president. He opposed radical Republicans who passed Reconstruction Acts over his veto. The first U.S. president to be impeached, he survived the Senate removal by only one vote. He was a very weak president.
15th Amendment: Ratified 1870 - No one could be denied the right to vote on account of race, color or having been a slave. It was to prevent states from amending their constitutions to deny black suffrage.
Grantism: Grants way of dealing with the presidency, which disillusioned many Northern Republicans, included his continuing support of Radical Reconstruction policies, and the corruption within the Grant administration itself.
Congressional Reconstruction: When Congress reconvened in December 1865, Congress refused to seat the representatives of the "restored states and created a new Joint Committee of Reconstruction.
Greenbacks/ specie resumption act: Name given to paper money issued by the government during the Civil War, so called because the back side was printed with green ink. They were not redeemable for gold, but $300 million were issued anyway. Farmers hit by the depression wanted to inflate the notes to cover losses, but Grant vetoed an inflation bill and greenbacks were added to permanent circulation. But in 1879, Congress said that greenbacks were redeemable for gold, but no one wanted to redeem them for face gold value. Because paper money was much more convenient than gold, they remained in circulation.
Radical Republicans (Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner): after the Civil War, a group that believed the South should be harshly punished and thought that Lincoln was sometimes too compassionate towards the South.
William Belknap/ indian ring: another House investigation revealed that Belknap, the Secretary of war, had accepted bribes to retain an Indian- post trader in office
Jim Crow laws: state and local statutes that by the first years of the 20th century had institutionalized an elaborate system of segregation reaching into almost every area of southern life.
Booker T. Washington/ Tuskeegee institute: Washington was the chief spokesman for commitment to education, as he was also the founder and president of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Born into slavery, he worked his way out of poverty through getting an education and he urged other blacks to follow the same road to self- improvement.
William Seward: An eager expansionist, he was the energetic supporter of the Alaskan purchase and negotiator of the deal often called "Seward's Folly" because Alaska was not fit for settlement or farming.
Whiskey Ring: During the Grant administration, a group of officials were importing whiskey and using their offices to avoid paying the taxes on it, cheating the treasury out of millions of dollars.
crop lien system: in this system, Storekeepers granted credit until the farm was harvested. To protect the creditor, the storekeeper took a mortgage, or lien, on the tenant's share of the crop. The system was abused and uneducated blacks were taken advantage of. The result, for Blacks, was not unlike slavery.
Atlanta Compromise: was Washington's famous speech in Georgia in 1895, in which he outlined a controversial philosophy of race relations. He claimed that blacks should forgo agitation for political rights and instead concentrate on self- improvement and preparation for equality through receiving an education.
Black Codes: Restrictions on the freedom of former slaves, passed by Southern governments.
U.S. Grant: U.S. president 1873-1877. Military hero of the Civil War, he led a corrupt administration, consisting of friends and relatives. Although Grant was personally a very honest and moral man, his administration was considered the most corrupt the U.S. had had at that time.
Tweed Ring: the corrupt part of Tammany Hall in New York City, that Samuel J. Tilden, the reform governor of New York had been instrumental in overthrowing.
Lynching/ Ida B. Wells: a committed black journalist, Wells launched what became an international anti- lynching movement with a series of impassioned articles after the lynching of three of her friends in her home town Memphis, Tennessee.

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