MXMS U.S. History

Reconstruction: the period following the Civil War in which the Southern states were reorganized and reintegrated into the Union.

 

Thirteenth Amendment: the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery in the United States.

 

Fourteenth Amendment: the constitutional amendment giving full rights of citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, except for Native Americans.

 

Fifteenth Amendment: the constitutional amendment that guaranteed voting rights regardless of race or previous condition of servitude.

 

Andrew Johnson: Seventeenth President of the United States (1865-1869); became President following Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

 

Impeach: to charge a holder of public office with misconduct.

 

Radical Republicans: the political group who sought harsh punishments for the South following the Civil War.

 

Black Codes: laws passed after the Civil War restricting African Americans freedom; limited African Americans to a labor economy with low wages.

 

Wade-Davis Bill: proposed Reconstruction bill prohibiting those who fought for the Confederacy from holding public office.

 

Carpetbagger: a northerner who moved to the South immediately after the Civil War hoping to take advantage of the reorganization and reintegration of the Southern states.

 

Transcontinental Railroad: the first continuous railroad line in the United States, constructed between 1863 and 1869.

 

American Indian Wars: the series of armed conflicts between settlers and U.S. soldiers and Native Americans.

 

Frontier: a wilderness at the settled edge of an area of a country.

 

Wounded Knee Massacre: occurred on December 29, 1890 in South Dakota; more than 300 Sioux were killed.

 

Battle of Little Bighorn: the 1876 battle in which George Armstrong Custer and his soldiers were annihilated by Sitting Bull and his warriors.

 

Sitting Bull: a Native American leader of the Sioux tribe in the late-nineteenth century.

 

George Armstrong Custer: a cavalry commander of the Civil War and American Indian Wars; killed in the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1890.

 

Butch Cassidy: a leader of an American Wild West gang called the "Wild Bunch"

 

Billy the Kid: a legendary outlaw of late-nineteenth century New Mexico.

 

Wyatt Earp: an American Wild West deputy sheriff, gambler, and deputy marshal who took part in the infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1881.