People
16th President of the United States who led the Union during the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Abraham Lincoln
Major causes included slavery and its expansion, sectional differences between North and South, and Southern secession after Lincoln’s election. Slavery was central to the secession crisis.
Causes of the Civil War
Southern laws passed after the Civil War that restricted the freedom and rights of formerly enslaved African Americans, including their employment and movement.
Black Codes
Period after the Civil War, commonly dated 1865–1877, when the United States worked to rebuild the South, restore the former Confederate states, and define the rights of formerly enslaved people.
Reconstruction
Journalist and civil rights activist best known for her campaign against lynching and racial violence. She used newspaper articles, investigations, speeches, and pamphlets to expose injustice.
Ida B. Wells
Leading Confederate general who commanded the Army of Northern Virginia and surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox in 1865.
Robert E. Lee
White supremacist organization that used violence, intimidation, and terrorism against Black Americans and Reconstruction supporters, including efforts to prevent Black citizens from voting.
Ku Klux Klan
Prohibited denying a citizen the right to vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Ratified in 1870.
15th Amendment
Derogatory term used for white Southerners who supported the Republican Party and Reconstruction. Many were small farmers or Southern Unionists.
Scalawags
System in which a farmer rented land from a landowner and farmed it. Unlike many sharecroppers, they might own some of their equipment or supplies, but debt was still common.
Tenant Farming
Became president after Lincoln's assassination. He favored a lenient approach toward former Confederate states, clashed with Congress over Reconstruction, and was impeached by the House but not removed by the Senate
Andrew Johnson
Government created by 11 Southern states that seceded from the United States. Its president was Jefferson Davis.
Confederate States of America
Federal agency created in 1865 to help formerly enslaved people with food, housing, medical care, education, and legal assistance.
Freedman's Bureau
Farming system in which a farmer worked someone else's land and paid the landowner with a share of the crops produced. Many sharecroppers became trapped in debt.
Sharecropping
Republicans in Congress who wanted stronger protections for formerly enslaved people and greater civil and political rights for Black Americans during Reconstruction.
Radical Republicans
President of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War.
Jefferson Davis
The North
State and local laws and practices that enforced racial segregation and discrimination, particularly in the South after Reconstruction.
Example: Separate schools, restaurants, transportation, restrooms, and other public facilities.
Jim Crow Laws
A fee a person had to pay in order to vote. Among the methods used to prevent many African Americans and poor citizens from voting.
Poll Tax
Union general who accepted Robert E. Lee's surrender and later became president. As president, his administration used federal laws and troops to combat Ku Klux Klan violence during Reconstruction
Ulysses S. Grant
Scholar and civil rights activist who pushed for political rights and immediate opposition to racial discrimination. He helped establish the movement that became the NAACP and became one of its major early leaders
W.E.B Du Bois
The Union was preserved, slavery was abolished through the 13th Amendment, and the nation entered Reconstruction. The South also faced widespread economic and physical destruction.
Impacts of the Civil War
Lincoln's order that declared enslaved people free in areas of the Confederacy that were in rebellion beginning January 1, 1863. It also helped make ending slavery a central Union war aim.
Emancipation Proclamation
Voting restrictions that allowed a man to vote if he or his ancestors had been eligible to vote before a certain date, effectively protecting many white voters while excluding many Black voters whose ancestors had been enslaved.
Grandfather Clauses
Law declaring people born in the United States to be citizens and providing citizens equal protection of their basic legal rights. Congress passed it over Andrew Johnson's veto.
Civil Rights Act of 1866