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476 Chapter 16 | The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877
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 blacks’ 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 whites committed to rolling back the gains of Reconstruction
scalawags a pejorative term used for southern whites 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 blacks in former Confederate states
Summary
16.1 Restoring the Union
President Lincoln worked to reach his goal of reunifying the nation quickly and proposed a lenient plan to reintegrate the Confederate states. After his murder in 1865, Lincoln’s vice president, Andrew Johnson, sought to reconstitute the Union quickly, pardoning Southerners en masse and providing Southern states with a clear path back to readmission. By 1866, Johnson announced the end of Reconstruction. Radical Republicans in Congress disagreed, however, and in the years ahead would put forth their own plan of Reconstruction.
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