Reconstruction

The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, explicitly states that the right of citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

While Reconstruction aimed to integrate freedmen into society, it ultimately failed to secure long-term rights due to the rise of Jim Crow laws, white supremacist violence, and the end of federal oversight.

Poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses were discriminatory tools used by Southern states to circumvent the 15th Amendment and disenfranchise Black voters.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) established the separate but equal doctrine, allowing racial segregation as long as facilities were supposedly equal. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) later overturned this decision. Dred Scott dealt with citizenship, not segregation.

A sharecropper is a tenant farmer who gives a portion of their crop to the landowner as rent. This system became common in the South after the Civil War.

Jim Crow laws were state and local statutes in the Southern United States that enforced racial segregation in all public facilities, creating a 'separate but equal' status for Black Americans.

The Freedmen's Bureau was established by Congress in 1865 to assist formerly enslaved people and poor whites in the South by providing food, housing, medical aid, and education.

The Ku Klux Klan used terrorism, violence, and intimidation to suppress the rights of Black citizens and to undermine the Republican Party's influence during the Reconstruction era.

Following the Civil War and the end of Reconstruction, the Democratic Party became the dominant political force in the South, maintaining this 'Solid South' for nearly a century.

A carpetbagger was a derogatory term used by Southerners to describe Northerners who moved to the South after the Civil War to profit from the region's instability or participate in Reconstruction politics.

A scalawag was a derogatory term used by white Southern Democrats to describe white Southerners who supported Reconstruction policies and the Republican Party.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, including former slaves, and guaranteed all citizens equal protection under the law.

Radical Republicans clashed with President Andrew Johnson because he frequently vetoed their Reconstruction legislation, which they felt was too lenient toward the former Confederate states.

Impeachment is the formal process by which a legislative body levels charges against a government official for misconduct. It is the first step in the removal process.

Lincoln's 10% Plan was designed to facilitate a quick reconciliation by offering amnesty to most Confederates who swore an oath of loyalty to the Union. It required only 10% of a state's 1860 voters to take this oath to establish a new state government.

Black Codes were restrictive laws passed by Southern states during Reconstruction to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force.

The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, formally abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States, except as punishment for a crime.