The Politics of Reconstruction

Chapter 12.1 – 12.3 Vocabulary

Reconstruction

• The period after the Civil War when the South was reorganized and reintegrated into the Union. It lasted from 1865 to 1877.

Ten Percent Plan• Lincoln’s plan for

readmitting Southern states to the Union after the Civil War was over. It said that a state could reenter the Union after 10 percent of it’s population had taken an oath of allegiance to the United States.

Radical Republicans• The name given to a

group of politicians in the U.S. Congress who advocated emancipation of slaves before and during the Civil War, and insisted on harsh penalties for the South following the war.

Freedmen's Bureau

• An agency of the War Department set up in 1865 to assist freed slaves in obtaining land, jobs, fair treatment, and education, after the Civil War.

Scalawag• Southern

whites who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party after the Civil War.

Carpetbaggers• A Northerner who moved to the South after

the Civil War, during Reconstruction(1865-1877), in order to profit from the instability and power vacuum that existed at this time.