Reconstruction

• Federal law in the US declaring that everyone born in the US and not subject to any foreign power is a citizen, regardless of race or previousness of being a slave or involuntary servitude.
• It didn't work so well for African Americans or
• Native Americans on reservations as it wasn't enforced.

Denied the President of the United States the power to remove anyone who had been appointed by a past President without the advice and consent of the United States Senate, unless it was approved during the next full session of Congress.

• Used in the South after the Civil War to describe Northerners who went to the South during Reconstruction to make money. Carpetbags were what these people carried their belongings in when they traveled to the South.
• Most of them were good, but the corrupt nature of others led the term to become an insult.

Term used in the South after the Civil War to describe native white Southerners who joined the Republican party and aided in carrying out the congressional Reconstruction program.

• American politician who represented Mississippi as a U.S. Senator from 1875 to 1881.
• He was the first Black American to serve a full term in the US Senate.

• First African American to serve in the US Senate and first African American in US Congress. He represented Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during Reconstruction.
• As of 2008, he is 1/5 of African Americans ever to have served in the US Senate.

• Credit system widely used by farmers in the US in the South from the 1860s to the 1920s.
• Farmers in the South had little money and the system was a way for farmers to get credit before the planting season by borrowing against the value for anticipated harvests

• American civil engineer, surveyor and politician from New York.
• He was in the Whig party.

• American statesman who studied law and was admitted
• to the bar in 1830. He was a US Representative and elected both Lt. Governor and Governor of NY. He didn't favor abolition nor slavery.
• He eventually became a Republican and lost his political standing.

• Common term for corruption and greed during the period after the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. Members of Grant's aministration took part in price skimming and tax evasion.
• It also referred to how big business had begun increase control over local and national government .

• Practice of politicians referencing the blood of martyrs or heroes to criticize opponents. Started with a factitious incident in which Benjamin Franklin Butler of Massachusetts, when making a speech on the floor of the HoR, allegedly held up a shirt stained with the blood of a carpetbagger whipped by the KKK.
• He did give a speech condemning the Klan, but there was no bloody shirt.

• American newspaper editor, founder of the New York Tribune.
• For its time the Tribune was known as the greatest journalistic influence in history.

Federal law that removed voting restrictions and office-holding disqualification against most of the secessionists who rebelled in the American Civil War, except for some 500 military leaders of the Confederacy. I taffected over 150,000 former Confederate troops who had taken part in the American Civil War. The Amnesty helped to swing the political balance in the south, giving voting rights to the ex-Confederates who would most likely vote for the Democratic party.

• It involved the Union Pacific Railroad and the Crédit Mobilier of America construction company in the building of the First Transcontinental Railroad. The distribution of Crédit Mobilier shares of stock by Congressman Oakes Ames along with cash bribes to congressmen took place during the Johnson
• presidency in 1868. The revelation of the congressmen who received cash bribes or shares in Crédit Mobilier took place during the Grant administration in 1872.

• Group of distillers and public officials who defrauded the federal government of liquor taxes. Soon after the Civil War these taxes were raised.
• Large distillers bribed government officials in order to retain the tax proceeds. The Whiskey Ring was a public scandal.

• Governor of New York, US Senator and the Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.
• He was very anti-slavery and was a big figure of the Rep. party when it was forming.

• The Alaska Purchase by the US from the Russian Empire occurred in 1867 at the comand of Seward.
• The territory purchased was 586,412 square miles of the modern state of Alaska.

• White paramilitary group est. 1874 in Louisiana and operated during Reconstruction. Known as "the military arm of the Democratic Party" and contributed to its taking over control of the Louisiana Legislature.
• After white Democrats regained power, White Leagues were absorbed into state militias and the National Guard.

• Lt. Gen. in the Confederate Army.
• Figure in the postwar establishment of the first Ku Klux Klan organization opposing the military occupation and rule in the South.

• Founded in 1865 by veterans of the Confederate Army. Its purpose was to restore white supremacy in the aftermath of the Civil War. The Klan resisted Reconstruction by intimidating carpetbaggers, scalawags and freedmen.They had very violent methods and the rise in murders resulted in a backlash amoug S. elites who viewed the Klan's excesses as an excuse for federal troops to continue occupation.
• It was destroyed by President Ulysses S. Grant's prosecution and enforcement under the Civil Rights Act of 1871.

They helped protect the voting rights of African-Americans and were mainly aimed at cutting down the KKK's activities. It made any actions to influence voting, or conspiring to deprive AfAms of civil rights federal offenses.

• Guaranteed that everyone, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, was entitled to the same treatment in "public accommodations".
• Deemed unconst. by Congress.

• Black civil rights organization founded in 1905. Named for the "mighty current" of change the group wanted to effect and Niagara Falls, which was near where the first meeting took place.
• It called for opposition to racial segregation and disenfranchisement as well as policies of accommodation and conciliation promoted by African American leaders.