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Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction
President Abraham Lincoln would grant full presidential pardons to southerners who swore an oath of allegiance to the Union and the United States Constitution and accepted the emancipation of slaves. Also, a state government would be reestablished in ex-Confederate states once at least ten percent of the voters in that state had taken this oath. -
Wade-Davis Bill
Was similar to Lincoln's set of terms, but these ones were much stricter. Instead of ten, at least fifty percent of voters in that state had to have taken the loyalty oath and only non-Confederate states could vote on a new state constitution of an ex-Confederate state. This bill passed in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, but was vetoed by President Lincoln. -
Freedmen's Bureau
Agency officially known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. It acted as a welfare agency for both blacks and whites left impoverished following the war. -
Civil Rights Act of 1866
This law was passed originally in 1865 by Congress in order to protect the rights of African-Americans in the aftermath of the war. However, President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill, so it had to be passed again in 1866. -
Reconstruction Acts
The Reconstruction Acts divided the South into five districts overseen by the Union army. They also furthened the Reconstruction requirements for an ex-Confederate to rejoin the Union. -
Tenure of Office Act
This act prohibited the president from removing a federal official or military commander without the approval of the Senate. After President Johnson, who felt that this act was unconstitutional, dismissed Radical Republican Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the House of Representatives then impeached Johnson. -
Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
After dismissing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the House of Representatives called for the impeachment President Johnson, arguing that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act of 1867. Johnson was tried, but Congress fell one vote short of the two-thirds quorum required to impeach the president. Thus, the trial resulted in President Johnson's acquittal of all charges. -
Fourteenth Amendment
This amendment to the Constitution granted American citizenship to all those who were born or naturalized in the United States, which also included recently freed slaves. -
Fifteenth Amendment
This amendment to the Constitution gave the right to vote to all citizen of the United States regardless of race, thus allowing African-American men to vote for the first time. -
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Force Acts
Congress passed these acts in order to stop racist violence from the Ku Klux Klan against African-Americans. -
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Crédit Mobilier
Insiders from the Union Pacific Railroad gave shares of stock of the Crédit Mobilier of America company, a construction company, to members of Congress to as a bribe to hide their huge profits. When this scandal was discovered, it destroyed the political careers of many politicans and added to the corrupt marring of the Grant administration. -
Amnesty Act
This act removed the last of the restrictions on ex-Confederates besides the top leaders and allowed southern conservatives to vote for Democrats to retake control of state governments -
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Panic of 1873
Overspeculation by financiers and overbuilding of infrastructure led to widespread business failures and economic depression, further troubling the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant. -
Civil Rights Act of 1875
This law was proposed by Senator Charles Sumner, a prominent Radical Republican from Massachusetts, and it guaranteed equal rights to African-Americans in society. In 1883, however, this law was declared unconstitutional by Congress. -
Compromise of 1877
This compromise was an informal deal negotiated following the scandal of the presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden. The compromise stated that Hayes would become president as long as he would immediately end federal support for the Republicans in the South and would support the construction of a southern transcontinental railroad. Hayes did fulfill these obligations shortly following his presidential inauguration.