Who Was Responsible for Making Things Whole Again After the War

Between 1863 and 1877, the U.S. government undertook the task of integrating nearly 4 million formerly enslaved people into society subsequently the Civil War bitterly divided the country over the issue of slavery. A white slaveholding south that had congenital its economy and culture on slave labor was now forced by its defeat in a war that claimed 620,000 lives to change its economic, political and social relations with African Americans.

"The state of war destroyed the establishment of slavery, ensured the survival of the union, and set in motion economical and political changes that laid the foundation for the modern nation," wrote Eric Foner, the author of Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877. "During Reconstruction, the Usa made its first attempt. . .to build an egalitarian society on the ashes of slavery."

Reconstruction is generally divided into three phases: Wartime Reconstruction, Presidential Reconstruction and Radical or Congressional Reconstruction, which concluded with the Compromise of 1877, when the U.S. government pulled the last of its troops from southern states, ending the Reconstruction era.

Wartime Reconstruction

Freedmen'southward Schoolhouse in Beaufort, Southward Carolina, c. late 1860s.

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December viii, 1863: The 10-Percent Program
Two years into the Civil War in 1863 and nearly a twelvemonth after signing the Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln announced the Announcement of Amnesty and Reconstruction or the Ten-Percent Plan, which required 10 percent of a Confederate state's voters to pledge an oath of allegiance to the Union to begin the process of readmission to the Marriage.

With the exception of top Amalgamated leaders, the proclamation also included a full pardon and restoration of belongings, excluding enslaved people, for those who took part in the war against the Marriage. Eric Foner writes that Lincoln'due south Ten-Percent Plan "might be better viewed equally a device to shorten the war and solidify white support for emancipation" rather than a genuine effort to reconstruct the due south.

July ii, 1864: The Wade Davis Beak
Radical Republicans from the House and the Senate considered Lincoln's Ten-Percent plan too lenient on the Due south. They considered success nothing less than a consummate transformation of southern society.

Passed in Congress in July 1864, the Wade-Davis Bill required that 50 percent of white males in rebel states swear a loyalty oath to the constitution and the union before they could convene country constitutional convents. Co-sponsored by Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Congressman Henry Davis of Maryland, the pecker besides chosen for the regime to grant African American men the right to vote and that "anyone who has voluntarily borne arms against the United States," should be denied the correct to vote.

Asserting that he wasn't gear up to be "inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration," Lincoln pocket-vetoed the bill, which infuriated Wade and Davis, who accused the President in a manifesto of "executive usurpation" in an effort to ensure the back up of southern whites in one case the war was over. The Wade-Davis Bill was never implemented.

January 16, 1865: Forty-Acres and a Mule
On this day, General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Field Order No. 15, which redistributed roughly 400,000 confiscated acres of land in Lowcountry Georgia and South Carolina in xl-acre plots to newly freed Black families. When the Freedmen's Agency was established in March 1865, created partly to redistribute confiscated state from southern whites, it gave legal title for twoscore-acre plots to African Americans and white southern unionists.

Afterwards the war was over, President Andrew Johnson returned almost of the land to the one-time white slaveowners. At its height during Reconstruction, the Freedmen's Agency had 900 agents scattered across eleven southern states handling everything from labor disputes to distributing clothing and food to starting schools to protecting freedmen from the Ku Klux Klan.

April 14, 1865: Lincoln's Assassination
Six days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to the Matrimony Army'south Commanding Full general Ulysses Grant in Appomattox, Virginia, effectively ending the Civil War, Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theater in Washington D.C. by John Wilkes Booth, a stage actor.

Just 41 days earlier his bump-off, the 16th President had used his second inaugural address to indicate reconciliation between the n and south. "With malice toward none; with charity for all ... let us strive to finish the work we are in; to demark up the nation'south wounds," he said. But the attempt to demark these wounds through Reconstruction policies would be left to Vice President Andrew Johnson, who became President when Lincoln died.

READ More than: At His Second Inauguration, Abraham Lincoln Tried to Unite the Nation

Presidential Reconstruction

Political cartoon depicting Vice President Andrew Johnson and President Abraham Lincoln equally they attempt to mend a tear in the United States during Reconstruction, 1865.

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May 29, 1865: Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction Plan
President's Johnson'southward Reconstruction program offered full general amnesty to southern white people who pledged a future loyalty to the U.Southward. government, with the exception of Amalgamated leaders who would later receive individual pardons.

The plan likewise gave southern whites the power to reclaim property, with the exception of enslaved people and granted usa the right to start new governments with provisional governors. Withal Johnson's plan did nothing to deter the white landowners from standing to economically exploit their former slaves.

"Well-nigh from the moment the Ceremonious War concluded," writes Eric Foner, " the search began for the legal means of subordinating a volatile Black population that regarded economic independence equally a corollary of freedom and the old labor discipline as a bluecoat of slavery."

December half dozen, 1865: The 13th Amendment
The ratification of the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, with the "exception as a punishment for a criminal offense." Lincoln'due south Emancipation Proclamation on January i, 1863 only covered the 3 million slaves in Confederate-controlled states during the Civil State of war. The 13th amendment was the first of three Reconstruction amendments.

READ More: Does an Exception Clause in the 13th Amendment Withal Permit Slavery?

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1865: The Black Codes
To thwart whatsoever social and economic mobility that Blackness people might take nether their condition as free people, southern states beginning in tardily 1865 with Mississippi and South Carolina enacted Blackness Codes, various laws that reinforced Black economic subjugation to their sometime slaveowners.

In Southward Carolina there were vagrancy laws that could lead to imprisonment for "persons who lead idle or disorderly lives" and apprenticeship laws that allowed white employers to take Black children from homes for labor if they could testify that the parents were destitute, unfit or vagrants. According to Foner, "the entire complex of labor regulations and criminal laws was enforced by a police force apparatus and judicial system in which Blacks enjoyed near no voice whatever."

READ MORE: How the Black Codes Limited African American Progress After the Ceremonious State of war

Congressional Reconstruction

March ii, 1867: Reconstruction Human action of 1867
The Reconstruction Act of 1867 outlined the terms for readmission to representation of insubordinate states. The bill divided the erstwhile Amalgamated states, except for Tennessee, into v war machine districts. Each state was required to write a new constitution, which needed to be canonical by a majority of voters—including African Americans—in that land. In addition, each land was required to ratify the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution. After meeting these criteria related to protecting the rights of African Americans and their property, the former Confederate states could gain total recognition and federal representation in Congress.

July 9, 1868:14th Amendment
The 14^th amendment granted citizenship to all persons "born or naturalized in the United states," including sometime enslaved persons, and provided all citizens with "equal protection under the laws," extending the provisions of the Pecker of Rights to the states. The amendment authorized the government to punish states that abridged citizens' right to vote past proportionally reducing their representation in Congress.

WATCH: The 15th Amendment

February 3, 1870: 15^thursday Amendment
The 15th Subpoena prohibited states from disenfranchising voters "on business relationship of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The amendment left open the possibility, nevertheless, that states could institute voter qualifications equally to all races, and many former amalgamated states took advantage of this provision, instituting poll taxes and literacy tests, amidst other qualifications.

READ More: When Did African Americans Become the Correct to Vote?

February 23, 1870: Hiram Revels Elected as First Black U.South. Senator
On this day, Hiram Revels, an African Methodist Episcopal minister, became the start African American to serve in Congress when he was elected by the Mississippi State Legislature to cease the final two years of a term.

During Reconstruction, xvi African Americans served in Congress. By 1870, Black men held three Congressional seats in Due south Carolina and a seat on the country Supreme Court—Jonathan J. Wright. Over 600 Black men served in state legislators during the Reconstruction period.

Blanche K. Bruce, another Mississippian, became the get-go African American in 1875 to serve a total term in the U.Due south. Senate.

READ More: The First Black Human being Elected to Congress Was Nearly Blocked From Taking His Seat

April 20, 1871:The Ku Klux Klan Human activity of 1871
To suppress Blackness economic and political rights in the South during Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups similar the Knights of the White Camelia were formed to enforce the Black Codes and terrorize Blackness people and any white people who supported them.

Founded in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee past a grouping of Confederate veterans, the Ku Klux Klan carried out a reign of terror during Reconstruction that forced Congress to empower President Ulysses S. Grant to end the group's violence. The 3rd Enforcement Act or the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, equally it is meliorate known, immune federal troops to brand hundreds of arrests in South Carolina, forcing perhaps ii,000 Klansmen to flee the state. According to Foner, the Federal intervention had "broken the Klan's back and produced a dramatic decline in violence throughout the South."

March one, 1875: Ceremonious Rights Act of 1875
The concluding major piece of major Reconstruction legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, guaranteed African Americans equal treatment in public transportation, public accommodations and jury service. In 1883 the decision was overturned in the Supreme Court, notwithstanding. Justices ruled that the legislation was unconstitutional on the grounds that the Constitution did non extend to private businesses and that information technology was unauthorized past the 13^th and 14^th amendments.

The Terminate of Reconstruction

President Rutherford B. Hayes oversaw the stop of Reconstruction.

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April 24, 1877:Rutherford B. Hayes and the Compromise of 1877
Twelve years after the close of the Ceremonious War, President Rutherford B. Hayes pulled federal troops from their posts surrounding the capitals of Louisiana and Southward Carolina—the final states occupied by the U.S. regime.

Co-ordinate Foner, Hayes didn't withdraw the troops as widely believed, but the few that remained were of no upshot to the reemergence of a white political dominion in these states. In what is widely known every bit the Compromise of 1877, Democrats accepted Hayes' victory as long equally he made concessions such as the troop withdrawal and naming a southerner to his chiffonier. "Every state in the Due south," said a Black Louisianan, "had got into the hands of the very men that that held the states as slaves."

READ More: How the 1876 Election Effectively Ended Reconstruction

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