Behind the Scenes at the Treasury
On September 2, 1789, Congress created this department, which manages U.S. currency and houses the IRS.
What is the Department of the Treasury?
Coins are produced in this building.
What is the U.S. Mint?
This 1865 amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States.
What is the 13th Amendment?
This amendment, passed in 1868, granted citizenship and equal protection under the law.
What is the 14th Amendment?
Completed in 1869, this railroad connected the east and west coasts of the U.S.
What is the Transcontinental Railroad?
He was the first Secretary of the Treasury and helped ratify the U.S. Constitution.
Who is Alexander Hamilton?
This law enforcement agency was founded in 1865 to stop counterfeiters.
What is the Secret Service?
This organization helped freedmen with food, education, and legal services during Reconstruction.
What is the Freedmen’s Bureau?
This 1870 amendment gave African American men the right to vote.
What is the 15th Amendment?
This major canal connected the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean.
What is the Erie Canal?
This Treasury bureau prints all U.S. paper money in denominations like $1, $5, $10, and $100.
What is the Bureau of Engraving and Printing?
This modern bill has advanced security features to prevent counterfeiting, including raised printing and special threads.
What is the $20 bill?
These laws, passed in the South after Reconstruction, enforced racial segregation.
What are Jim Crow Laws?
Together, these three amendments reshaped civil rights after the Civil War.
What are the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments?
This 1862 law gave free land to settlers willing to farm and improve it.
What is the Homestead Act?
This organization within the Treasury handles taxes and is its largest branch.
What is the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)?
Federal Reserve Notes are the official form of this in the United States.
What is currency (or legal tender)?
This white supremacist group used violence and terror to suppress African American political participation.
What is the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)?
This term describes the destroying of the community created by African Americans post-Reconstruction.
What is disenfranchisement?
Immigrants in the late 1800s often came from these two parts of this continent.
What is Europe?
This U.S. Mint branch holds the majority of America’s gold.
What is Fort Knox?
This Treasury bureau investigates financial crimes like money laundering.
What is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN)?
These Republicans in Congress pushed for strict Reconstruction policies and civil rights for freedmen.
Who were the Radical Republicans?
This system trapped many freedmen in a cycle of poverty by paying rent with crops or high fees for rented land.
What is sharecropping?
The Dawes Act aimed to divide tribal land and assimilate this group into U.S. culture.
Who are Native Americans?