Reconstruction era

The Reconstruction era was the period in American history which lasted from 1863 to 1877.

In the Reconstruction era following the war, legal and voting rights were extended to freed slaves.

The term has two applications: the first applies to the complete history of the entire country from 1865 to 1877 following the American Civil War; the second, to the attempted transformation of the 11 former Confederate states from 1863 to 1877, as directed by Congress.

During the Reconstruction era that followed the war, national unity was slowly restored, the national government expanded its power, and civil and political rights were granted to freed black slaves through amendments to the Constitution and federal legislation.

When President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, was assassinated at the end of the Civil War, Vice President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat from Tennessee and former slave holder, became President.

Johnson implemented his own form of Presidential Reconstruction – a series of proclamations directing the seceded states to hold conventions and elections to reform their civil governments.

Radical Republicans in Congress sought stronger, federal measures to upgrade the rights of African Americans, including the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, while curtailing the rights of former Confederates, such as through the provisions of the Wade–Davis Bill.

The Wade–Davis Bill of 1864 was a bill proposed for the Reconstruction of the South written by two Radical Republicans, Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland.

The term has two applications: the first applies to the complete history of the entire country from 1865 to 1877 following the American Civil War; the second, to the attempted transformation of the 11 former Confederate states from 1863 to 1877, as directed by Congress.

After the war, Confederate states were readmitted to the Union during the Reconstruction era, after each ratified the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlawed slavery.

Elected in 1868, Republican President Ulysses S. Grant supported Congressional Reconstruction and enforced the protection of African Americans in the South through the use of the Enforcement Acts passed by Congress.

As president, Grant worked with the Radical Republicans in the Reconstruction of the Union while having to deal with corruption in his administration.

Hostile whites began referring to these politicians as "carpetbaggers". In ten states, not including Virginia, coalitions of freedmen, recent black and white arrivals from the North ("carpetbaggers"), and white Southerners who supported Reconstruction ("scalawags") cooperated to form Republican biracial state governments.

In practice, the term carpetbagger was often applied to any Northerner who was present in the South during the Reconstruction Era (1863–1877).

The new national Reconstruction laws – in particular laws requiring suffrage (the right to vote) for freedmen – incensed white supremacists in the South, giving rise to the Ku Klux Klan. White paramilitary organizations, especially the Ku Klux Klan and also the White League and Red Shirts formed with the political aim of driving out the Republicans.

The first Klan flourished in the Southern United States in the late 1860s during Reconstruction, then died out by the early 1870s.

Radical Republicans in Congress sought stronger, federal measures to upgrade the rights of African Americans, including the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, while curtailing the rights of former Confederates, such as through the provisions of the Wade–Davis Bill. Passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments is the constitutional legacy of Reconstruction.

In the final years of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed, Congress repeatedly debated the rights of black former slaves freed by the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment, the latter of which had formally abolished slavery.

In 1877, as part of a Congressional bargain to elect Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as president following the disputed 1876 presidential election, U.S. Army troops were withdrawn from the three states (South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida) where they still remained.

The Republican Party nominated Hayes as its candidate for the presidency in 1876, where he won through the Compromise of 1877 that officially ended the Reconstruction Era by leaving the South to govern itself.

Three visions of Civil War memory appeared during Reconstruction: the reconciliationist vision, which was rooted in coping with the death and devastation the war had brought; the white supremacist vision, which included segregation and the preservation of the traditional cultural standards of the South; and the emancipationist vision, which sought full freedom, citizenship, and Constitutional equality for African Americans.

White supremacy was dominant in the United States both before and after the American Civil War, and it also persisted for decades after the Reconstruction Era.

A Republican coalition came to power in nearly all the Southern states and set out to transform the society by setting up a free labor economy, using the U.S. Army and the Freedmen's Bureau.

The Freedmen's Bureau was an important agency of early Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South.

Nevertheless, President Grant was unable to resolve the escalating tensions inside the Republican Party between northern Republicans and southern Republicans (this latter group would be labelled "scalawags" by those opposing Reconstruction). In ten states, not including Virginia, coalitions of freedmen, recent black and white arrivals from the North ("carpetbaggers"), and white Southerners who supported Reconstruction ("scalawags") cooperated to form Republican biracial state governments.

In United States history, scalawags (sometimes spelled scallawags or scallywags) were white Southerners who supported Reconstruction after the American Civil War.

Historian Eric Foner argues:

He writes extensively on American political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African-American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography, and has been a member of the faculty at the Columbia University Department of History since 1982.

Radical Republicans in Congress sought stronger, federal measures to upgrade the rights of African Americans, including the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, while curtailing the rights of former Confederates, such as through the provisions of the Wade–Davis Bill. The 1866 Congressional elections turned on the issue of Reconstruction, producing a sweeping Republican victory in the North, and providing the Radical Republicans with sufficient control of Congress to override Johnson's vetoes and commence their own "Radical Reconstruction" in 1867.

The Radical Republicans were a faction of American politicians within the Republican Party of the United States from around 1854 (before the American Civil War) until the end of Reconstruction in 1877.

In ten states, not including Virginia, coalitions of freedmen, recent black and white arrivals from the North ("carpetbaggers"), and white Southerners who supported Reconstruction ("scalawags") cooperated to form Republican biracial state governments.

Although the Commonwealth was under one-party rule for nearly a century following Reconstruction, both major national parties are competitive in modern Virginia.

He experimented by giving land to blacks in South Carolina.

From 1865 to 1877, South Carolina underwent Reconstruction.

This was followed by a period which white Southerners labeled "Redemption", during which white-dominated state legislatures enacted Jim Crow laws and, beginning in 1890, disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites through a combination of constitutional amendments and electoral laws.

All were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by white Democratic-dominated state legislatures after the Reconstruction period.

The 1866 Congressional elections turned on the issue of Reconstruction, producing a sweeping Republican victory in the North, and providing the Radical Republicans with sufficient control of Congress to override Johnson's vetoes and commence their own "Radical Reconstruction" in 1867.

The 1866 elections were a decisive event in the early Reconstruction era, in which President Andrew Johnson faced off against the Radical Republicans in a bitter dispute over whether Reconstruction should be lenient or harsh toward the vanquished South.

As Confederate states came back under control of the U.S. Army, President Abraham Lincoln set up reconstructed governments in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana during the war.

During the Reconstruction Era, Louisiana was subject to U.S. Army occupation as part of the Fifth Military District.

A "Second Reconstruction", sparked by the Civil Rights Movement, led to civil rights laws in 1964 and 1965 that ended legal segregation and re-opened the polls to blacks.

The movement has its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, although the movement achieved its largest legislative gains in the mid-1960s after years of direct actions and grassroots protests.

In different states, Reconstruction began and ended at different times; federal Reconstruction ended with the Compromise of 1877.

It resulted in the United States federal government pulling the last troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era.

White paramilitary organizations, especially the Ku Klux Klan and also the White League and Red Shirts formed with the political aim of driving out the Republicans.

The Red Shirts or Redshirts of the Southern United States were white supremacist paramilitary terrorist groups that were active in the late 19th century in the last years of, and after the end of, the Reconstruction era of the United States.

Passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments is the constitutional legacy of Reconstruction.

In the final years of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed, Congress repeatedly debated the rights of the millions of former black slaves.

In recent decades most historians follow Foner in dating the Reconstruction of the South as starting in 1863 (with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Port Royal Experiment) rather than 1865.

To ensure the abolition of slavery in all of the U.S., Lincoln pushed for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, and insisted that Reconstruction plans for Southern states require abolition in new state constitutions.