Civil War & Reconstruction Vocabulary Words

A very large farm.

Plantation

A person who fought to end slavery.

Abolitionist

President of the Confederacy (the South) during the Civil War.

Jefferson Davis

United States President during the Civil War. He wrote the Emancipation Proclamation and

worked to reconstruct the country after the war.

Abraham Lincoln

The North’s strategy during the Civil War to cut off supplies from the South by blocking

their trade.

Anaconda Plan

A law requiring men to register for military service.

Draft

Money owed after a war.

War debts

An above-ground series of escape routes for slaves traveling from the South to the North

to gain their freedom.

Underground Railroad

People who led runaway slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

Conductors

A former slave, she made over 19 journeys from the South to the North helping slaves

escape.

Harriet Tubman

Songs sung by slaves and members of the Underground Railroad to encourage hope,

defy slave-masters, and send secret messages.

Spirituals

The time period when the United States was rebuilt after the Civil War.

Reconstruction

A newly free slave.

Freedmen

An office established in 1865 by Congress to help former black slaves and poor whites in

the South after the Civil War.

Freedmen’s Bureau

Lincoln's plan for Reconstruction, which stated that a southern state could rejoin the United States once 10 percent of its voters

swore an oath of loyalty to the Union.

Ten Percent Plan

An official pardon for people who have been convicted of political crimes.

Amnesty

Laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War, that restricted

African Americans' freedoms and opportunities (such as jobs and education)

Black Codes

Acts passed by the Radical Republicans (who took charge of Reconstruction) that put strict requirements in place if a southern state wanted to rejoin the Union.

Reconstruction Acts

Republicans who favored drastic and sometimes harsh measures against the

southern states in the period following the Civil War.

Radicals

To charge a politician with misconduct or crimes.

Impeach

A person from the northern states who went to the South after the Civil War to profit

from the Reconstruction.

Carpetbagger

A secret society of white Southerners in the United States; used threats and violence to

suppress black people.

Ku Klux Klan

A farmer who rents a piece of land from the owner and pays him back with a portion of

the crop he harvests.

Sharecropper

A tax that had to be paid every time a person voted. Poll taxes were used after the Civil

War to prevent free blacks, who often could not afford to pay them, from voting.

Poll Tax

A test of someone’s ability to read and write that had to be passed before voting; used to

keep freedmen and the poor from voting.

Literacy Test

A law that stated that if your grandfather was allowed to vote (as of 1867), then you can vote, too, without having to pass a literacy

test.

Grandfather Clause

Legal separation of races (for example, in schools, bathrooms, or trains)

Segregation

Racial segregation laws enacted between 1876 and 1965 in certain U.S. states;

greatly restricted the rights and opportunities for free black citizens.

Jim Crow Laws