Reconstruction Vocabulary

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Thaddeus Stevens

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a Republican member of congress and one of the most powerful members in the United States House of Representatives. He fought for rights for the freedmen in reconstruction. He was a leader in the impeachment of Andrew Jackson. Was against black suffrage.

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Panic of 1873

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a severe economical depression in both Europe and the United States; lasted until 1879. This took the Northerners minds off of reconstruction for a while because they need to fix the economy, which was more important.

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Tenure of Office Act

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was a federal law that was intended to restrict the power of the United States President, to remove certain office holders without the power of the senate.

This is important because Radical Republicans could stop Andrew Johnson from making unconstitutional decisions.

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Military Rule

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the ideology of government as best served when under military control. When reconstruction took place, the south got divided into groups and the sections of the military would be assigned a certain group and would protect blacks in those areas.

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Tenant Farming

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This is when a black person works on a plantation for a white man who owns it. The only difference between this and slavery is that the blacks would be paid for it. However, it was usually a very little amount of pay because the plantation owners had to make money. A lot of freedmen ended up working for there prior masters in this sort of way because there weren't many other jobs out there for them, especially because none of them had an education. This was an easy guaranteed job because the plantation owners need people to work the fields so they could make money.

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Plessy vs. Ferguson

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is a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the decision upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in private businesses, under the doctrine of "separate but equal." Separate but equal was the idea that segregation was necessary, but blacks and whites could not be integrated. This gave blacks the right to equal facilities as whites, but in different places. Blacks were given the separate part of this, but almost always lacked the equal part. Whites were still given better facilities than Blacks. It was the white mans way in the south of attempting to make the blacks feel like they were worthless. To make them feel like they were inferior to the white people.