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{{Short description|Military occupation of southern US states from 1865 to 1877}}
{{About |the history of the United States from 1865 until 1877 |the U.S. legislation enacted between 1867 and 1868|Reconstruction Acts|other uses|Reconstruction (disambiguation)}}
{{Use  American English |date= May 2018}}{{Use mdy dates|date= November 2011}}
{{very long|date=May 2025|words=21,000}}
{{Infobox historical era
|name=Reconstruction era
|start=1865
|end=1877
|image=ReconstructionEraColl.png
|caption=From left to right and top to the bottom: The ruins of [[Richmond, Virginia]]; newly-freed [[African American]]s voting for the first time in 1867;<ref>[http://objectofhistory.org/objects/extendedtour/votingmachine/?order=2 "The First Vote" by William Waud] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140202212332/http://objectofhistory.org/objects/extendedtour/votingmachine/?order=2 |date=February 2, 2014 }} ''Harpers Weekly'' Nov. 16, 1867</ref> office of the [[Freedmen's Bureau]] in [[Memphis, Tennessee]]; [[Memphis riots of 1866]]
|location=[[United States]]<br/> ([[Southern United States|Southern States]])
|before=[[History of the United States (1849–1865)|Civil War era]]
|including=[[Third Party System]]
|after=[[Gilded Age]]
|key_events=[[Freedmen's Bureau]]<br/> [[Assassination of Abraham Lincoln]]<br/> [[Ku Klux Klan|Formation of the KKK]]<br/> [[Reconstruction Acts]]<br/> [[Impeachment of Andrew Johnson]]<br/> [[Enforcement Acts]]<br/> [[Reconstruction Amendments]] <br/> [[Compromise of 1877]]
|presidents=[[Abraham Lincoln]]<br/> [[Andrew Johnson]]<br/>[[Ulysses S. Grant]]<br/>[[Rutherford B. Hayes]]
}}
{{Campaignbox Reconstruction Era}}
{{slavery}}
{{Periods in US history}}
{{Nadir of American race relations}}
{{African American topics sidebar}}

The '''Reconstruction era''' was a period in [[History of the United States|US history]] that followed the [[American Civil War]] (1861-65) and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolition of slavery]] and reintegration of the former [[Confederate States of America|Confederate States]] into the United States. [[Reconstruction Amendments|Three amendments]] were added to the [[United States Constitution]] to grant citizenship and equal civil rights to the [[Freedmen|newly freed slaves]]. To circumvent these, former Confederate states imposed [[poll taxes]] and [[literacy tests]] and engaged in [[terrorism in the United States|terrorism]] to intimidate and control [[African Americans]] and discourage or prevent them from voting.<ref>{{Cite web |last1= |title=History & Culture – Reconstruction Era National Historical Park |website=U.S. National Park Service |url=https://www.nps.gov/reer/learn/historyculture/historyculture.htm |access-date=|date = February 24, 2023 |publisher=www.nps.gov |language=en}}</ref>

Throughout the war, the Union was confronted with the issue of how to administer captured areas and handle slaves escaping to Union lines. The [[United States Army]] played a vital role in establishing a [[Labour economics|free labor economy]] in the South, protecting freedmen's rights, and creating educational and religious institutions. Despite its reluctance to interfere with slavery, Congress passed the [[Confiscation Acts]] to seize Confederates' slaves, providing a precedent for President [[Abraham Lincoln]] to issue the [[Emancipation Proclamation]]. Congress established a [[Freedmen's Bureau]] to provide much-needed food and shelter to the newly freed slaves. As it became clear the Union would win, Congress debated the process for readmission of seceded states. [[Radical Republicans|Radical]] and [[Moderate Republicans (Reconstruction era)|moderate]] Republicans disagreed over the nature of secession, conditions for readmission, and desirability of social reforms. Lincoln favored the "[[ten percent plan]]" and vetoed the [[Wade–Davis Bill]], which proposed strict conditions for readmission. Lincoln was [[Assassination of Abraham Lincoln|assassinated]] in 1865, just as [[conclusion of the American Civil War|fighting was drawing to a close]]. He was replaced by [[Andrew Johnson]], who vetoed [[Radical Republican]] bills, pardoned Confederate leaders, and allowed Southern states to pass draconian [[Black Codes (United States)|Black Codes]] that restricted the rights of freedmen. His actions outraged many Northerners and stoked fears the Southern elite would regain power. Radical Republicans swept to power in the 1866 midterm elections, gaining [[40th United States Congress|majorities in both houses of Congress]].

In 1867-68, the Radical Republicans passed the [[Reconstruction Acts]] over Johnson's vetoes, setting the terms by which former Confederate states could be readmitted to the Union. Constitutional conventions held throughout the South gave Black men the right to vote. New state governments were established by a coalition of freedmen, [[Scalawags|supportive white Southerners]], and [[Carpetbaggers|Northern transplants]]. They were opposed by "[[Redeemers]]," who sought to restore [[white supremacy]] and reestablish [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] control of Southern governments and society. Violent groups, including the [[Ku Klux Klan]], [[White League]], and [[Red Shirts (United States)|Red Shirts]], engaged in paramilitary insurgency and terrorism to disrupt Reconstruction governments and terrorize Republicans.<ref>{{cite book |first= John C. |last= Rodrigue |title= Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana's Sugar Parishes, 1862–1880 | url= https://books.google.com/books?id=SvK13hta7rQC&pg=PA168 |date= 2001 |publisher=[[Louisiana State University Press]] |location=Baton Rouge, Louisiana |page= 168 |isbn= 978-0-8071-5263-8}}</ref> Congressional anger at Johnson's attempts to veto radical legislation led to [[impeachment of Andrew Johnson|his impeachment]], but he was not removed from office.

Under Johnson's successor, President [[Ulysses S. Grant]], Radical Republicans passed additional legislation to enforce civil rights, such as the [[Ku Klux Klan Act]] and [[Civil Rights Act of 1875]]. However, resistance to Reconstruction by Southern whites and its high cost contributed to its losing support in the North. The [[1876 United States presidential election|1876 presidential election]] was marked by Black voter suppression in the South, and the result was close and contested. An [[Electoral Commission (United States)|Electoral Commission]] resulted in the [[Compromise of 1877]], which awarded the election to Republican [[Rutherford B. Hayes]] on the understanding that federal troops would cease to play an active role in regional politics. Efforts to enforce federal civil rights in the South ended in 1890 with the failure of the [[Lodge Bill]].

Historians disagree about the legacy of Reconstruction. Criticism focuses on the failure to prevent violence, corruption, starvation and disease. Some consider the Union's policy toward freed slaves as inadequate and toward former slaveholders as too lenient.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Lynn|first1=Samara|last2=Thorbecke|first2=Catherine|title=What America owes: How reparations would look and who would pay|website=[[ABC News (United States)|ABC News]]|date=September 27, 2020|url=https://abcnews.go.com/Business/america-owes-reparations-pay/story?id=72863094|access-date=February 24, 2021|archive-date=February 25, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225082627/https://abcnews.go.com/Business/america-owes-reparations-pay/story?id=72863094|url-status=live}}</ref> However, Reconstruction is credited with restoring the federal Union, limiting reprisals against the South, and establishing a legal framework for racial equality via constitutional rights to [[Birthright citizenship in the United States|national birthright citizenship]], [[due process]], [[equal protection of the laws]], and male suffrage regardless of race.{{sfnmp|Guelzo|2018|1pp=11–12|Foner|2019|2p=198}}

==Dating==
The Reconstruction era had historically been dated from the end of the Civil War in 1865 until 1877, though other periodization schemes have been proposed more recently.{{Sfnp|Parfait|2009|pp=440–441, 441n1}} In the 20th century, most scholars began their review in 1865, with the end of formal hostilities between the North and South. However, in his landmark 1988 monograph ''[[Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877|Reconstruction]]'', [[Eric Foner]] proposed 1863, starting with the [[Emancipation Proclamation]], [[Port Royal Experiment]], and earnest debate of Reconstruction policies during the war.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=xxv}}<ref name=":3">{{Cite journal|last1=Stazak|first1=Luke|last2=Masur|first2=Kate|last3=Williams|first3=Heather Andrea|last4=Downs|first4=Gregory P.|last5=Glymph|first5=Thavolia|last6=Hahn|first6=Steven|last7=Foner|first7=Eric|author-link7=Eric Foner|date=January 2015|title=Eric Foner's 'Reconstruction' at Twenty-five|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43903055|journal=[[The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era]]|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|location=Cambridge, England|volume=14|issue=1|pages=13–27|doi=10.1017/S1537781414000516|jstor=43903055|s2cid=162391933|quote=''Reconstruction'' is almost literally a landmark. It defines the territory.|access-date=January 18, 2022|archive-date=January 18, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220118215245/https://www.jstor.org/stable/43903055|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}}</ref> By 2017, among scholars it was widely understood that Reconstruction started in either "1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation or 1865 with the end of the war".<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Harlow |first=Luke E. |date=March 2017 |title=The Future of Reconstruction Studies |url=https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/forum-the-future-of-reconstruction-studies/ |url-status=live |journal=Journal of the Civil War Era |location=Chapel Hill, North Carolina |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=3–6 |doi=10.1353/cwe.2017.0001 |issn=2159-9807 |jstor=26070478 |s2cid=164628161 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220118061534/https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/forum-the-future-of-reconstruction-studies/ |archive-date=January 18, 2022 |access-date=January 18, 2022|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

The [[Reconstruction Era National Historical Park]] proposed 1861 as a starting date, interpreting Reconstruction as beginning "as soon as the Union captured territory in the Confederacy". According to Downs and Masur, "Reconstruction began when the first US soldiers arrived in slaveholding territory, and enslaved people escaped..." Soon afterwards, early discourse and experimentation began regarding Reconstruction policies. The policies provided opportunities to enslaved [[Gullah]] populations in the Sea Islands who became free overnight on November 7, 1861, after the [[Battle of Port Royal]] when slaveholders fled. After the battle, reconstruction policies were implemented under the [[Port Royal Experiment]] which were [[Freedmen's schools|education]], [[Black land loss in the United States|landownership]], and labor reform. This transition to a free society was called "Rehearsal for Reconstruction."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Downs |first1=Gregory |url=http://www.npshistory.com/publications/nhl/theme-studies/reconstruction-era.pdf |title=The Reconstruction Era 1861–1900 |last2=Masur |first2=Kate |publisher=National Park Service: The National Historic Landmarks Program |year=2017 |pages=3–4, 91}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Nov. 7, 1861: The Port Royal Experiment Initiated |url=https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/port-royal-experiment-initiated/ |website=Zinn Education Project |access-date=24 January 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Reconstruction Era National Historical Park |url=http://npshistory.com/publications/reer/index.htm |access-date=24 January 2024 |website=National Park Service History Electronic Library & Archive}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last=Brundage|first=Fitzhugh|date=March 2017|title=Reconstruction in the South|url=https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/forum-the-future-of-reconstruction-studies/reconstruction-in-the-south/|journal=Journal of the Civil War Era|publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]]|location=Chapel Hill, North Carolina|volume=7|issue=1|doi=10.1353/cwe.2017.0002|s2cid=159753820|access-date=January 18, 2022|archive-date=January 18, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220118061556/https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/forum-the-future-of-reconstruction-studies/reconstruction-in-the-south/|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

The conventional end of Reconstruction is 1877,<ref name=":0" /> with the reduction of the role of federal troops in regional politics.{{Sfn|Foner|1988|p=582}} Later dates have been suggested. Fritzhugh Brundage proposed that Reconstruction ended in 1890, when Republicans failed to pass the [[Lodge Bill]] to secure voting rights for Black Americans in the South.<ref name=":1" /> [[Heather Cox Richardson]] argued that for a periodization from 1865 until 1920, when the election of President [[Warren G. Harding]] marked the end of a national sentiment in favor of using government to promote equality.{{Sfnp|Richardson|2017|pp=12, 18–19}} [[Manisha Sinha]] periodized Reconstruction from 1860—when Lincoln won office as a president opposed to slavery—until 1920, when America ratified the [[Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] affirming the right of women to vote, which Sinha called "the last Reconstruction amendment" because it drew upon a Reconstruction belief that government could protect [[civil and political rights]].{{Sfnp|Sinha|2024|pp=xvii, 5, 425}}

==Background==
In the [[American Civil War]], eleven Southern states, all of which permitted [[slavery]], seceded from the United States following the election of Lincoln to the presidency and formed the [[Confederate States of America]].{{Sfnp|Sinha|2024|pp=5–6}} Though Lincoln initially declared secession "legally void"<ref>[https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:389?rgn=div1;sort=occur;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=legally+void First Inaugural Address—Final Text, March 4, 1861]</ref> and declined to negotiate with Confederate delegates to Washington, following the [[Battle of Fort Sumter|Confederate assault]] on the Union garrison at [[Fort Sumter]], Lincoln declared that "an extraordinary occasion" existed in the South and raised an army to quell "combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings."<ref>[https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:527?rgn=div1;sort=occur;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=combinations+too+powerful+to+be+suppressed+by+the+ordinary+course+of+judicial+proceedings Proclamation Calling Militia and Convening Congress, April 15, 1861]</ref> Over the next four years, 237 named battles were fought between the Union and Confederate armies, resulting in the dissolution of the Confederate States in 1865. During the war, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that "all persons held as slaves" within the Confederate territory "are, and henceforward shall be free."<ref>[https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html Text of Emancipation Proclamation]</ref>

=== Abolition of slavery and social reform ===
The Civil War had immense social implications for the United States. Emancipation had altered the legal status of 3.5 million persons, threatened the end of the plantation economy of the South, and provoked questions regarding the legal and social inequality of the races in the United States. The end of the war was accompanied by a large migration of newly freed people to the cities,{{sfnp|Jones|2010|p=72}} where they were relegated to the lowest paying jobs, such as unskilled and service labor. Men worked as rail workers, rolling and lumber mills workers, and hotel workers. Black women were largely confined to domestic work employed as cooks, maids, and child nurses, or in hotels and laundries. The large population of slave artisans during the prewar period did not translate into a large number of free artisans during Reconstruction.{{sfnp|Hunter|1997|pp=21–73}} The dislocations had a severe negative impact on the Black population, with a large amount of sickness and death.{{sfnp|Downs|2012|p=41}}

During the war, Lincoln experimented with [[land reform]] by giving land to African-Americans in [[History of South Carolina#Reconstruction era (1865–1877)|South Carolina]]. Having lost their enormous investment in slaves, [[planter class|plantation owners]] had minimal capital to pay freedmen workers to bring in crops. As a result, a system of [[sharecropping]] was developed, in which landowners broke up large [[plantations in the American South|plantations]] and rented small lots to the freedmen and their families. Thus, the main structure of the Southern economy changed from an elite minority of landed gentry slaveholders into a [[tenant farming]] agriculture system.<ref name=":2">{{cite journal|first1=Claudia D.|last1=Goldin|authorlink1=Claudia Goldin|first2=Frank D.|last2=Lewis|date=June 1975|url=https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2662305/Goldin_EconomicCost.pdf|title=The economic cost of the American Civil War: Estimates and implications|journal=[[The Journal of Economic History]]|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|location=Cambridge, England|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190412050216/https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2662305/Goldin_EconomicCost.pdf|archive-date=April 12, 2019|volume=35|issue=2|pages=299–326|doi=10.1017/S0022050700075070 |jstor=2119410|s2cid=18760067 }}</ref>

Historian [[David W. Blight]] identified three visions of the social implications of Reconstruction:<ref>{{cite book |last=Blight |first=David W. |url=https://archive.org/details/racereunion00davi |title=Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |year=2001 |isbn=9780674022096 |location=Cambridge, Mass. |author-link=David W. Blight |url-access=registration}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}}
* the ''reconciliationist'' vision, which focused on coping with the death and devastation the war had brought;
* the ''[[white supremacist]]'' vision, which demanded strict segregation of the races and the preservation of political and cultural domination of Blacks by Whites, opposed any right to vote by Blacks, and accepted intimidation and violence; and
* the ''[[emancipationist]]'' vision, which emphasized full freedom, citizenship, male [[suffrage]], and constitutional equality for [[African Americans]].

=== Economic devastation ===
The Civil War had a devastating economic and material impact on the South, where most combat occurred.

The enormous cost of the Confederate war effort took a high toll on the region's economic infrastructure. The direct costs in [[human capital]], government expenditures, and physical destruction totaled $3.3&nbsp;billion. By early 1865, the [[Confederate dollar]] had nearly zero value, and the Southern banking system was in collapse by the war's end. Where scarce Union dollars could not be obtained, residents resorted to a [[barter]] system.<ref name=":2" />

The Confederate States in 1861 had 297 towns and cities, with a total population of 835,000 people; of these, 162, with 681,000 people, were at some point occupied by Union forces. Eleven cities were destroyed or severely damaged by military action, including Atlanta, Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond, though the rate of damage in smaller towns was much lower.<ref name="Paskoff">{{Cite journal |last=Paskoff |first=Paul F. |date=2008 |title=Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy |journal=[[Civil War History]] |volume=54 |issue=1 |pages=35–62 |doi=10.1353/cwh.2008.0007}}</ref> Farms were in disrepair, and the [[Antebellum South|prewar]] stock of horses, mules, and cattle was much depleted. Forty percent of Southern livestock had been killed.{{sfnp|McPherson|1992|p=38}} The South's farms were not highly mechanized, but the value of farm implements and machinery according to the [[1860 United States census|1860 Census]] was $81 million and was reduced by 40% by 1870.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hesseltine |first=William B. |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofthesout027909mbp/ |title=A History of the South, 1607–1936 |publisher=Prentice-Hall |year=1936 |location=New York |pages=573–574 |oclc=477679 |author-link=William B. Hesseltine |via=Archive.org}}</ref> The [[transportation]] [[infrastructure]] lay in ruins, with little railroad or [[riverboat]] service available to move crops and animals to market.<ref>Ezell, John Samuel. 1963. ''The South Since 1865''. pp. 27–28.</ref> Railroad mileage was located mostly in rural areas; over two-thirds of the South's rails, bridges, rail yards, repair shops, and rolling stock were in areas reached by Union armies, which systematically destroyed what they could. Even in untouched areas, the lack of maintenance and repair, the absence of new equipment, the heavy over-use, and the deliberate relocation of equipment by the Confederates from remote areas to the war zone ensured the system would be ruined at war's end.<ref name="Paskoff" /> Restoring the infrastructure—especially the railroad system—became a high priority for Reconstruction state governments.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Lash |first=Jeffrey N. |date=1993 |title=Civil War Irony: Confederate Commanders and the Destruction of Southern Railways |journal=Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives |volume=25 |issue=1 |pages=35–47}}</ref>

Over a quarter of Southern White men of military age—the backbone of the White workforce—died during the war, leaving their families destitute,{{sfnp|McPherson|1992|p=38}} and per capita income for White Southerners declined from $125 in 1857 to a low of $80 in 1879. By the end of the 19th century and well into the 20th century, the South was locked into a system of poverty. How much of this failure was caused by the war and by previous reliance on slavery remains the subject of debate among economists and historians.<ref>{{cite web |last=Ransom |first=Roger L. |date=February 1, 2010 |title=The Economics of the Civil War |url=http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/ransom.civil.war.us |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111213062917/http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/ransom.civil.war.us |archive-date=December 13, 2011 |access-date=March 7, 2010 |website=Economic History Services}} Direct costs for the Confederacy are based on the value of the dollar in 1860.</ref> In both the North and South, modernization and industrialization were the focus of the post-war recovery, built on the growth of cities, railroads, factories, and banks and led by Radical Republicans and former Whigs.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Alexander |first=Thomas B. |date=August 1961 |title=Persistent Whiggery in the Confederate South, 1860–1877 |journal=[[Journal of Southern History]] |volume=27 |issue=3 |pages=305–329 |doi=10.2307/2205211 |jstor=2205211}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Trelease |first=Allen W. |date=August 1976 |title=Republican Reconstruction in North Carolina: A Roll-call Analysis of the State House of Representatives, 1866–1870 |journal=[[Journal of Southern History]] |volume=42 |issue=3 |pages=319–344 |doi=10.2307/2207155 |jstor=2207155}}</ref>
[[File:Wealth, per capita, in the United States, from 9th US Census (1872).jpg|left|thumb|The distribution of wealth per capita in 1872, illustrating the disparity between North and South in that period]]

=== Legal reconstruction ===
From its origins, questions existed as to the legal significance of the Civil War, whether secession had actually occurred, and what measures, if any, were necessary to restore the governments of the Confederate States. For example, throughout the conflict, the United States government recognized the legitimacy of a [[Restored Government of Virginia|unionist government in Virginia]] led by [[Francis Harrison Pierpont]] out of [[Wheeling, West Virginia|Wheeling]]. (This recognition was rendered moot when the Pierpont government separated the northwestern counties of the state and sought admission as [[West Virginia]].) As additional territory came under Union control, reconstructed governments were established in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Debates over ''legal reconstruction'' focused on whether secession was legally valid, the implications of secession for the nature of the seceded states, and the legitimate method of their readmission to the Union.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

The first plan for legal reconstruction was introduced by Lincoln in his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, the so-called "[[ten percent plan]]" under which a loyal unionist state government would be established when ten percent of its 1860 voters pledged an oath of allegiance to the Union, with a complete pardon for those who pledged such an oath. By 1864, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas had established fully functioning Unionist governments under this plan. However, Congress passed the [[Wade–Davis Bill]] in opposition, which instead proposed that a ''majority'' of voters must pledge that they had ''never'' supported the Confederate government and disfranchised all those who had. Lincoln vetoed the Wade–Davis Bill, but it established a lasting conflict between the presidential and congressional visions of reconstruction.<ref name="Foner 2009">{{Cite journal |last=Foner |first=Eric |author-link=Eric Foner|date=Winter 2009 |title=If Lincoln hadn't died&nbsp;... |url=http://www.americanheritage.com/content/if-lincoln-hadn%E2%80%99t-died |url-status=live |journal=American Heritage Magazine |volume=58 |issue=6 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120616125206/http://www.americanheritage.com/content/if-lincoln-hadn%E2%80%99t-died |archive-date=June 16, 2012 |access-date=July 26, 2010}}</ref>{{sfnp|Harris|1997|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}{{sfnp|Simpson|2009|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}

In addition to the legal status of the seceded states, Congress debated the legal consequences for Confederate veterans and others who had engaged in "insurrection and rebellion" against the government and the legal rights of those freed from slavery. These debates resulted in the [[Reconstruction Amendments]] to the United States Constitution.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

== Timeline ==
* August 6, 1861: The [[Confiscation Act of 1861]] becomes law.
* March 3, 1862: Lincoln appoints [[Andrew Johnson]] of Tennessee as the first military governor of a Southern state.
* July 17, 1862: The [[Confiscation Act of 1862]] becomes law, providing the legal basis for the Emancipation Proclamation.
* January 1, 1863: Lincoln issues the [[Emancipation Proclamation]], freeing all persons held in slavery in Confederate territory.
* December 8, 1863: Lincoln announces his "[[ten percent plan]]" for the recognizing unionist governments in Union-controlled Confederate territory.
* January 16, 1865: General William Tecumseh Sherman issues [[Special Field Orders No. 15]].<ref>[https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/shermans-field-order-no-15/ ''New Georgia Encyclopedia''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221212225842/https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/shermans-field-order-no-15/|date=December 12, 2022}}</ref>
* February 3, 1865: Lincoln meets to discuss reconciliation with Southern representatives at the [[Hampton Roads Conference]].
* March 3, 1865: The [[Freedmen's Bureau bills|Freedmen's Bureau Act]] becomes law.
* April 9, 1865: General [[Robert E. Lee]] surrenders the [[Army of Northern Virginia]] to [[Ulysses S. Grant]], effectively ending hostilities on land.
* April 14, 1865: Lincoln [[Assassination of Abraham Lincoln|is assassinated]] by [[John Wilkes Booth]]. [[Andrew Johnson]] becomes President.
* December 6, 1865: The [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] is ratified.
* March 27, 1866: Johnson vetoes the [[Civil Rights Act of 1866]].
* May 1 to 3, 1866: [[Memphis massacre of 1866|Riots]] in Memphis, Tennessee kill 48, primarily freed African Americans, and injure 75.
* July 24, 1866: Tennessee is the first state reestablished or readmitted to the Union.
* July 30, 1866: At least [[New Orleans Massacre of 1866|38 people are killed and 146 wounded]] in New Orleans at a racially integrated constitutional convention.
* August 27 through September 15, 1866: President Johnson launches a [[Swing Around the Circle|national speaking tour]] to rally support for his policies.
* October 9 through November 6, 1866: [[1866 United States elections|Congressional elections]] return large majorities for the radicals, ending presidential reconstruction under Johnson.
* March 4, 1867: Congress passes the [[Reconstruction Acts|first Reconstruction Act]], establishing requirements for the readmission of additional states, over Johnson's veto.
* July 19, 1867: Congress passes the third Reconstruction Act, creating a system of military government throughout the South.
* August 12, 1867: Johnson suspends Secretary of War [[Edwin Stanton]] from office over his military reconstruction policies.
* March 2 and 3, 1868: Congress impeaches President Johnson on eleven articles of impeachment for violating the [[Tenure of Office Act (1867)|Tenure of Office Act]].
* May 26, 1868: The Senate narrowly votes against convicting Johnson.
* July 9, 1868: The [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] is ratified.
* February 3, 1870: The [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] is ratified.
* May 31, 1870: The [[Enforcement Act of 1870]] becomes law.
* February 24, 1871: Representatives from Georgia, the final Confederate state to be readmitted, are seated in Congress.
* February 28, 1871: The [[Second Enforcement Act]] becomes law.
* April 20, 1871: The [[Ku Klux Klan Act]] becomes law.
* May 22, 1872: The [[Amnesty Act]] becomes law.
* March 1, 1875: The [[Civil Rights Act of 1875]] becomes law.
* November 6, 1876: The [[1876 United States presidential election|presidential election]] between Hayes and Tilden results in an electoral dispute over Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana.

[[File:Broad Street Charleston South Carolina 1865.jpg|thumb|The Southern economy had been ruined by the war. Charleston, South Carolina: Broad Street, 1865]]

==Restoring the South to the Union==
[[File:Lincoln and Johnsond.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|A [[political cartoon]] of [[Andrew Johnson]] and [[Abraham Lincoln]], 1865, entitled "The Rail Splitter At Work Repairing the Union". The caption reads (Johnson): "Take it quietly Uncle Abe and I will draw it closer than ever." (Lincoln): "A few more stitches Andy and the good old Union will be mended."]]

During the Civil War, the [[Radical Republicans|Radical Republican]] leaders argued that slavery and the [[Slave Power]] had to be permanently destroyed. Moderates said this could be easily accomplished as soon as the [[Confederate States Army]] surrendered and the Southern states repealed secession and accepted the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Thirteenth Amendment]]—most of which happened by December 1865.{{sfnp|Donald |Baker |Holt |2001|loc=ch. 26}}

Lincoln broke with the Radicals in 1864. The [[Wade–Davis Bill]] of 1864 passed in Congress by the Radicals was designed to permanently disfranchise the Confederate element in the South. The bill asked the government to grant African American men the right to vote and that anyone who willingly gave weapons to the fight against the United States should be denied the right to vote. The bill required voters, fifty-one percent of White males, to take the [[ironclad oath|Ironclad Oath]] swearing that they had never supported the Confederacy or been one of its soldiers. This oath also entailed having them to swear a loyalty to the Constitution and the Union before they could have state constitutional meetings. Lincoln blocked it. Pursuing a policy of "malice toward none" announced in his second inaugural address,<ref>{{Cite magazine |date=September 1999 |title=The Second Inaugural Address |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99sep/9909lincaddress.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080516193457/http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99sep/9909lincaddress.htm |archive-date=May 16, 2008 |access-date=March 11, 2017 |magazine=[[The Atlantic Monthly]] |page=60 |pages= |volume=284 |issue=3}}</ref> Lincoln asked voters only to support the Union in the future, regardless of the past.{{sfnp|Harris|1997|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}} Lincoln [[pocket veto]]ed the Wade–Davis Bill, which was much more strict than the ten percent plan.

Following Lincoln's veto, the Radicals lost support but regained strength after [[Assassination of Abraham Lincoln|Lincoln's assassination]] in April 1865.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

=== 1865 ===
Upon President [[Abraham Lincoln assassination|Lincoln's assassination]] in April 1865, Vice President [[Andrew Johnson]] became president. Radicals considered Johnson to be an ally, but upon becoming president, he rejected the Radical program of Reconstruction. He was on good terms with ex-Confederates in the South and ex-[[Copperheads (politics)|Copperheads]] in the North. He appointed his own governors and tried to close the Reconstruction process by the end of 1865. [[Thaddeus Stevens]] vehemently opposed Johnson's plans for an abrupt end to Reconstruction, insisting that Reconstruction must "revolutionize Southern institutions, habits, and manners&nbsp;.... The foundations of their institutions&nbsp;... must be broken up and relaid, or all our blood and treasure have been spent in vain."{{sfnp|McPherson|1992|p=6}} Johnson broke decisively with the Republicans in Congress when he vetoed the [[Civil Rights Act of 1866|Civil Rights Act]] on March 27, 1866. While Democrats celebrated, the Republicans rallied, passed the bill again, and overrode Johnson's repeat veto.<ref name="Alexander Rucker">{{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Leslie M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uivtCqOlpTsC&pg=PA699 |title=Encyclopedia of African American History |last2=Rucker |first2=Walter C. |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-85109-774-6 |location=Santa Barbara |page=699}}</ref> Full-scale political warfare now existed between Johnson (now allied with the Democrats) and the Radical Republicans.{{sfnp|Donald |Baker |Holt |2001|loc={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}{{sfnp|Trefousse|1989|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}

Since the war had ended, Congress rejected Johnson's argument that he had the war power to decide what to do. Congress decided it had the primary authority to decide how Reconstruction should proceed, because the Constitution stated the United States had to guarantee each state a [[Republicanism in the United States|republican form of government]]. The Radicals insisted that meant Congress decided how Reconstruction should be achieved. The issues were multiple: Who should decide, Congress or the president? How should republicanism operate in the South? What was the status of the former Confederate states? What was the citizenship status of the leaders of the Confederacy? What was the citizenship and suffrage status of freedmen?{{sfnp|Donald |Baker |Holt |2001|loc=ch. 26–27}}

After the war ended, President Andrew Johnson gave back most of the land to the former White slave owners.<ref>{{Cite web |title=President Johnson's Amnesty Proclamation |url=https://www.andrewjohnson.com/04AJFirstYear/ii-1.htm |access-date=2025-03-07 |website=www.andrewjohnson.com}}</ref>

=== 1866 ===
By 1866, the faction of [[Radical Republicans]] led by Representative [[Thaddeus Stevens]] and Senator [[Charles Sumner]] was convinced that Johnson's Southern appointees were disloyal to the Union, hostile to loyal Unionists, and enemies of the Freedmen. Radicals used as evidence outbreaks of [[mob violence]] against Black people, such as the [[Memphis riots of 1866]] and the [[New Orleans massacre of 1866]]. Radical Republicans demanded a prompt and strong federal response to protect freedmen and curb Southern racism.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Conklin |first=Forrest |date=1993 |title='Wiping Out' Andy" Johnson's Moccasin Tracks: The Canvass of Northern States By Southern Radicals, 1866 |journal=[[Tennessee Historical Quarterly]] |volume=52 |issue=2 |pages=122–133 |jstor=42627061 |oclc=9973918681}}</ref>

Stevens and his followers viewed secession as having left the states in a status like new territories. Sumner argued that [[Secession in the United States|secession]] had destroyed statehood but the Constitution still extended its authority and its protection over individuals, as in [[Organized incorporated territories of the United States|existing U.S. territories]]. The Republicans sought to prevent Johnson's Southern politicians from "restoring the historical subordination of Negroes". Since slavery was abolished, the [[Three-fifths Compromise]] no longer applied to counting the population of Blacks. After the 1870 Census, the South would gain numerous additional representatives in Congress, based on the full population of freedmen.<ref group="lower-roman">All Blacks would be counted in 1870, whether or not they were citizens.</ref> One Illinois Republican expressed a common fear that if the South were allowed to simply restore its previous established powers, that the "reward of treason will be an increased representation".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Valelly |first=Richard M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=V4__EYITWk4C |title=The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-226-84530-2 |page=29 |via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Trefousse |first=Hans L. |title=The Radical Republicans |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=1975 |isbn=9780807101698 |location=Baton Rouge}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}}

The election of 1866 decisively changed the balance of power, giving the Republicans two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress, and enough votes to overcome Johnson's vetoes. They moved to [[Impeachment of Andrew Johnson|impeach Johnson]] because of his constant attempts to thwart Radical Reconstruction measures, by using the [[Tenure of Office Act (1867)|''Tenure of Office Act'']]. Johnson was acquitted by one vote, but he lost the influence to shape Reconstruction policy.{{sfnp|Donald |Baker |Holt |2001|loc=ch. 28–29}}

=== 1867 ===
In 1867, Congress passed the [[Reconstruction Acts]] of 1867 which outlined the terms in which the rebel states would be readmitted to the Union. Under these acts Republican Congress established [[Reconstruction military districts|military districts]] in the South and used [[United States Army|Army]] personnel to administer the region until new governments loyal to the Union—that accepted the Fourteenth Amendment and the right of freedmen to vote—could be established. Congress temporarily suspended the ability to vote of approximately 10,000 to 15,000 former Confederate officials and senior officers, while constitutional amendments gave full citizenship to all African Americans, and suffrage to the adult men.{{sfnp|Donald |Baker |Holt |2001|loc=ch. 29}} With the power to vote, freedmen began participating in politics. While many enslaved people were illiterate, educated Blacks (including [[Fugitive slaves in the United States|fugitive slaves]]) moved down from the North to aid them, and natural leaders also stepped forward. They elected White and Black men to represent them in constitutional conventions. A Republican coalition of freedmen, Southerners supportive of the Union (derisively called "[[scalawag]]s" by White Democrats), and Northerners who had migrated to the South (derisively called "[[carpetbagger]]s")—some of whom were returning natives, but were mostly Union veterans—organized to create constitutional conventions. They created new state constitutions to set new directions for Southern states.{{sfnp|Donald |Baker |Holt |2001|loc=ch. 30}}

===Suffrage===
[[File:Grand Army of the Republic by Swatjester.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|Monument in honor of the Grand Army of the Republic, organized after the war]]
Congress had to consider how to restore to full status and representation within the Union those Southern states that had declared their independence from the United States and had withdrawn their representation. [[Suffrage]] for former Confederates was one of two main concerns. A decision needed to be made whether to allow just some or all former Confederates to vote (and to hold office). The moderates in Congress wanted virtually all of them to vote, but the Radicals resisted. They repeatedly imposed the Ironclad Oath, which would effectively have allowed no former Confederates to vote. Historian [[Harold Hyman]] says that in 1866 congressmen "described the oath as the last bulwark against the return of ex-rebels to power, the barrier behind which [[Southern Unionists]] and Negroes protected themselves".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hyman |first=Harold |title=To Try Men's Souls: Loyalty Tests in American History |publisher=University of California Press |year=1959 |location=Berkeley |pages=93 |doi=10.2307/jj.8306230 |jstor=jj.8306230 |isbn=978-0-520-34566-9 |s2cid=265454373 |oclc=421583}}</ref>

Radical Republican leader [[Thaddeus Stevens]] proposed, unsuccessfully, that all former Confederates lose the right to vote for five years. The compromise that was reached disenfranchised many Confederate civil and military leaders. No one knows how many temporarily lost the vote, but one estimate placed the number as high as 10,000 to 15,000.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=273–276}} However, Radical politicians took up the task at the state level. In Tennessee alone, over 80,000 former Confederates were disenfranchised.<ref>{{Cite thesis |last=Severance |first=Benjamin Horton |title=Tennessee's Radical Army: The State Guard and Its Role in Reconstruction |date=2002 |degree=PhD |publisher=University of Tennessee |url=https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/6305|page=59}}</ref>

Second, and closely related, was the issue of whether the 4&nbsp;million freedmen were to be received as citizens: Would they be able to vote? If they were to be fully counted as citizens, some sort of representation for apportionment of seats in Congress had to be determined. Before the war, the population of slaves had been counted as [[Three-Fifths Compromise|three-fifths]] of a corresponding number of free Whites. By having 4&nbsp;million freedmen counted as full citizens, the South would gain additional seats in Congress. If Blacks were denied the vote and the right to hold office, then only Whites would represent them. Many, including most White Southerners, [[Northern Democratic Party|Northern Democrats]], and some Northern Republicans, opposed voting rights for African-Americans. The small fraction of Republican voters opposed to Black suffrage contributed to the defeats of several suffrage measures voted on in most Northern states.{{sfn|Foner|1988|p=223}} Some Northern states that had [[referendum]]s on the subject limited the ability of their own small populations of Blacks to vote.

Lincoln had supported a middle position: to allow some Black men to vote, especially [[United States Army|U.S. Army]] veterans. Johnson also believed that such service should be rewarded with citizenship. Lincoln proposed giving the vote to "the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gienapp |first=William |title=Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America: a biography |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2002 |isbn=9780195150995 |location=New York |pages=155}}</ref> In 1864, Governor Johnson said: "The better class of them will go to work and sustain themselves, and that class ought to be allowed to vote, on the ground that a loyal Negro is more worthy than a disloyal White man."{{sfnp|Patton|1934|p=126}}

As president in 1865, Johnson wrote to the man he appointed as governor of Mississippi, recommending: "If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution in English and write their names, and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at least two hundred and fifty dollars, and pay taxes thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary [Radicals in Congress], and set an example the other states will follow."<ref>Johnson to Gov. William L. Sharkey, August 1865; quoted in {{harvp|Franklin|1961|p=42}}.</ref>

[[File:FreedmenVotingInNewOrleans1867.jpeg|thumb|upright=1.15|Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867]]

Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, leaders of the Radical Republicans, were initially hesitant to enfranchise the largely illiterate freedmen. Sumner preferred at first impartial requirements that would have imposed literacy restrictions on Blacks and Whites. He believed that he would not succeed in passing legislation to disenfranchise illiterate Whites who already had the vote.<ref name="Donald">{{cite book|last=Donald|first=David Herbert|title=Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man|year=1970|publisher=Knopf|isbn=9780394418995|page=201|location=New York|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qph2AAAAMAAJ|via=Google Books}}</ref>

In the South, many poor Whites were illiterate as there was almost no [[public education]] before the war. In 1880, for example, the White illiteracy rate was about 25% in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina, and Georgia, and as high as 33% in North Carolina. This compares with the 9% national rate, and a Black rate of [[Literacy|illiteracy]] that was over 70% in the South.<ref name="Ayers">{{cite book |last=Ayers |first=Edward L. |url=https://archive.org/details/promiseofnewsout0000ayer_h6c1 |title=The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2007 |isbn=9780199724550 |edition=15th anniversary |page=418 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref> By 1900, however, with emphasis within the Black community on education, the majority of Blacks had achieved literacy.{{sfnp|Anderson|1988|pp=244–245}}

Sumner soon concluded that "there was no substantial protection for the freedman except in the franchise". This was necessary, he stated, "(1) For his own protection; (2) For the protection of the white Unionist; and (3) For the peace of the country. We put the musket in his hands because it was necessary; for the same reason we must give him the franchise." The support for voting rights was a compromise between moderate and Radical Republicans.{{sfnp|Randall|Donald|2016|p=581}}

The Republicans believed that the best way for men to get political experience was to be able to vote and to participate in the political system. They passed laws allowing all male freedmen to vote. In 1867, Black men voted for the first time. Over the course of Reconstruction, more than 1,500 African Americans held public office in the South; some of them were men who had escaped to the North and gained educations, and returned to the South. They did not hold office in numbers representative of their proportion in the population, but often elected Whites to represent them.<ref>{{cite book |last=Foner |first=Eric |title=Freedom's lawmakers: a directory of Black officeholders during Reconstruction |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1993 |isbn=9780195074062 |location=New York}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}} The question of [[women's suffrage]] was also debated but was rejected.<ref>{{Cite book |last=DuBois |first=Ellen |title=Feminism and suffrage: The emergence of an independent women's movement in America, 1848–1869 |publisher=Cornell University Press |year=1978 |isbn=9780801410437 |location=Ithaca |jstor=10.7591/j.ctvv411tt }}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}} Women eventually gained the right to vote with the [[Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] in 1920.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2021-09-21 |title=19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women's Right to Vote (1920) |url=https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/19th-amendment |access-date=2025-02-18 |website=National Archives |language=en}}</ref>

From 1890 to 1908, Southern states passed new state constitutions and laws that disenfranchised most Blacks and tens of thousands of poor Whites with new voter registration and electoral rules. When establishing new requirements such as subjectively administered [[literacy test]]s, in some states, they used "[[grandfather clause]]s" to enable illiterate Whites to vote.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Feldman |first=Glenn |title=The Disfranchisement Myth: Poor Whites and Suffrage Restriction in Alabama |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=2004 |isbn=9780820326153 |location=Athens |pages=136}}</ref>

===Southern Treaty Commission===
The [[Five Civilized Tribes]] that had been relocated to [[Indian Territory]] (now part of [[Oklahoma]]) held Black slaves and signed treaties supporting the Confederacy. During the war, a war among pro-Union and anti-Union Native Americans had raged. Congress passed a statute that gave the president the authority to suspend the appropriations of any tribe if the tribe is "in a state of actual hostility to the government of the United States&nbsp;... and, by proclamation, to declare all treaties with such tribe to be abrogated by such tribe".<ref>25 [[United States Code|U.S.C.]] Sec. 72.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url= http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/25C3.txt |title=Act of Congress, R.S. Sec. 2080 derived from act July 5, 1862, ch. 135, Sec. 1, 12 Stat. 528. |via=USCode.House.gov |publisher=[[United States House of Representatives]] |access-date=February 7, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120317074540/http://uscode.house.gov/download/pls/25C3.txt |archive-date=March 17, 2012}}</ref>

As a component of Reconstruction, the [[United States Department of the Interior|Interior Department]] ordered a meeting of representatives from all [[Tribe (Native American)|Indian tribes]] who had affiliated with the Confederacy.<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Chronicles/v014/v014p022.html |last=Perry |first=Dan W. |title=Oklahoma, A Foreordained Commonwealth |journal=Chronicles of Oklahoma |volume=14 |issue=1 |date=March 1936 |page=30 |publisher=Oklahoma Historical Society |access-date=February 8, 2012 |archive-date=February 14, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120214095157/http://digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v014/v014p022.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> The council, the [[Reconstruction Treaties|Southern Treaty Commission]], was first held in [[Fort Smith, Arkansas]] in September 1865, and was attended by hundreds of Native Americans representing dozens of tribes. Over the next several years the commission negotiated treaties with tribes that resulted in additional re-locations to [[Indian Territory]] and the ''[[de facto]]'' creation (initially by treaty) of an unorganized [[Oklahoma Territory]].{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

==Lincoln's presidential Reconstruction==
{{Abraham Lincoln series}}

===Preliminary events===
[[File:Abraham Lincoln O-77 matte collodion print.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Abraham Lincoln]], 16th [[President of the United States]] (1861–1865)]]

President Lincoln signed two [[Confiscation Acts]] into law, the first on August 6, 1861, and the second on July 17, 1862, safeguarding fugitive slaves who crossed from the Confederacy across Union lines and giving them indirect emancipation if their masters continued insurrection against the United States. The laws allowed the confiscation of lands for colonization from those who aided and supported the rebellion. However, these laws had limited effect as they were poorly funded by Congress and poorly enforced by Attorney General [[Edward Bates]].<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Cimbala |first1=Paul A. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8ZKybV1mPbcC |title=An uncommon time: the Civil War and the northern home front |last2=Miller |first2=Randall M. |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=2002 |isbn=9780823221950 |edition=1st |series=North's Civil War |location=New York |pages=285, 305 |via=Google Books}}</ref>{{sfnp|Wagner|Gallagher|McPherson|2002|pp=735–736}}<ref name="Williams 2006 pp. 54–59">{{Cite book |last=Williams |first=Frank J. |title=The Emancipation Proclamation : three views (social, political, iconographic) |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=2006 |isbn=9780807155486 |location=Baton Rouge |pages=54–59 |chapter='Doing Less' and 'Doing More': The President and the Proclamation Legally, Militarily, Politically}}</ref>

In August 1861, Major General [[John C. Frémont]], Union commander of the Western Department, declared martial law in [[Missouri]], confiscated Confederate property, and emancipated their slaves. Lincoln immediately ordered Frémont to rescind his emancipation declaration, stating: "I think there is great danger that{{nbsp}}... the liberating slaves of traitorous owners, will alarm our Southern Union friends, and turn them against us—perhaps ruin our fair prospect for Kentucky." After Frémont refused to rescind the emancipation order, Lincoln terminated him from active duty on November 2, 1861. Lincoln was concerned that the border states would secede from the Union if slaves were given their freedom. On May 26, 1862, Union Major General [[David Hunter]] emancipated slaves in South Carolina, [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], and Florida, declaring all "persons&nbsp;... heretofore held as slaves{{nbsp}}... forever free". Lincoln, embarrassed by the order, rescinded Hunter's declaration and canceled the emancipation.{{sfnp|Guelzo|1999|pp=[https://archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnre00guel/page/290 290–291]}}

On April 16, 1862, Lincoln signed a bill into law outlawing slavery in Washington, D.C., and freeing the estimated 3,500 slaves in the city. On June 19, 1862, he signed legislation outlawing slavery in all U.S. territories. On July 17, 1862, under the authority of the Confiscation Acts and an amended Force Bill of 1795, he authorized the recruitment of freed slaves into the U.S. Army and seizure of any Confederate property for military purposes.<ref name="Williams 2006 pp. 54–59"/><ref>{{Cite book |last=Trefousse |first=Hans L. |title=Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction |publisher=Greenwood Press |year=1991 |isbn=9780313258626 |location=New York |pages=viiii}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Abraham Lincoln |url=http://blueandgraytrail.com/event/Abraham_Lincoln |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100719122659/http://blueandgraytrail.com/event/Abraham_Lincoln |archive-date=July 19, 2010 |access-date=July 21, 2010 |work=Blue and Gray Trail}}</ref>

===Gradual emancipation and compensation===
In an effort to keep border states in the Union, Lincoln, as early as 1861, designed gradual [[compensated emancipation]] programs paid for by government bonds. Lincoln desired [[Delaware]], [[Maryland]], [[Kentucky]], and [[Missouri]] to "adopt a system of gradual emancipation which should work the extinction of slavery in twenty years". On March 26, 1862, Lincoln met with Senator Charles Sumner and recommended that a special joint session of Congress be convened to discuss giving financial aid to any border states who initiated a [[Gradual emancipation (United States)|gradual emancipation]] plan. In April 1862, the joint session of Congress met; however, the border states were not interested and did not make any response to Lincoln or any congressional emancipation proposal.{{sfnp|Guelzo|1999|pp=[https://archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnre00guel/page/333 333–335]}} Lincoln advocated compensated emancipation during the [[Hampton Roads Conference]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Murphree |first=R. Boyd |date=Summer 2018 |title=Review |url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0039.208/--our-one-common-country-abraham-lincoln-and-the-hampton-roads?rgn=main;view=fulltext |journal=Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association |volume=39 |issue=2 |issn=1945-7987}}</ref>

===Colonization===
In August 1862, Lincoln met with African American leaders and urged them to colonize some place in [[Central America]]. Lincoln planned to free the Southern slaves in the Emancipation Proclamation and he was concerned that freedmen would not be well treated in the United States by Whites in both the North and South. Although Lincoln gave assurances that the United States government would support and protect any colonies that were established for former slaves, the leaders declined the offer of colonization. Many free Blacks had been opposed to colonization plans in the past because they wanted to remain in the United States. Lincoln persisted in his colonization plan in the belief that emancipation and colonization were both part of the same program. By April 1863, Lincoln was successful in sending Black colonists to [[Haiti]] as well as 453 to [[Chiriquí Province|Chiriqui]] in Central America; however, none of the colonies were able to remain self-sufficient. [[Frederick Douglass]], a prominent 19th-century American [[Civil and political rights|civil rights]] activist, criticized Lincoln by stating that he was "showing all his inconsistencies, his pride of race and blood, his contempt for Negroes and his canting hypocrisy". African Americans, according to Douglass, wanted citizenship and civil rights rather than colonies. Historians are unsure if Lincoln gave up on the idea of African American colonization at the end of 1863 or if he actually planned to continue this policy up until 1865.<ref name="Williams 2006 pp. 54–59"/>{{sfnp|Guelzo|1999|pp=[https://archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnre00guel/page/333 333–335]}}<ref name="Catton 1963 pp. 365–367">{{Cite book |last=Catton |first=Bruce |title=Terrible Swift Sword |publisher=Doubleday |year=1963 |isbn=9780307833068 |series=The Centennial History of the Civil War |volume=2 |location=New York |pages=365–367, 461–468 |oclc=2158762}}</ref>

===Installation of military governors===
Starting in March 1862, in an effort to forestall Reconstruction by the Radicals in Congress, Lincoln installed military governors in certain rebellious states under Union military control.{{sfnp|Guelzo|1999|p=[https://archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnre00guel/page/390 390]}} Although the states would not be recognized by the Radicals until an undetermined time, installation of military governors kept the administration of Reconstruction under presidential control, rather than that of the increasingly unsympathetic Radical Congress. On March 3, 1862, Lincoln installed a loyalist Democrat, Senator Andrew Johnson, as military governor with the rank of brigadier general in his home state of Tennessee.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hall |first=Clifton R. |url=https://archive.org/details/andrewjohnsonmil01hall |title=Andrew Johnson: military governor of Tennessee |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=1916 |page=[https://archive.org/details/andrewjohnsonmil01hall/page/19 19] |oclc=259055353 |access-date=July 24, 2010 |via=Archive.org}}</ref> In May 1862, Lincoln appointed [[Edward Stanly]] military governor of the coastal region of [[North Carolina]] with the rank of brigadier general. Stanly resigned almost a year later when he angered Lincoln by closing two schools for Black children in [[New Bern, North Carolina|New Bern]]. After Lincoln installed Brigadier General [[George Foster Shepley (judge)|George Foster Shepley]] as military governor of Louisiana in May 1862, Shepley sent two anti-slavery representatives, [[Benjamin Flanders]] and [[Michael Hahn]], elected in December 1862, to the House, which capitulated and voted to seat them. In July 1862, Lincoln installed Colonel [[John S. Phelps]] as military governor of Arkansas, though he resigned soon after due to poor health.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Warner |first=Ezra J. |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/book/23721 |title=Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=1964 |isbn=9780807108222 |location=Baton Rouge}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}}

===Emancipation Proclamation===
{{Main|Emancipation Proclamation}}
[[File:EmancipationPhoto.jpg|thumb|Celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation in Massachusetts, 1862]]
In July 1862, Lincoln became convinced that "a military necessity" would give him authority under the Constitution to strike at slavery in order to win the Civil War for the Union. The Confiscation Acts were having only a minimal effect to end slavery. On July 22, he wrote a first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves in states in rebellion. After he showed his Cabinet the document, slight alterations were made in the wording. Lincoln decided that the defeat of the Confederate invasion of the North at the [[Battle of Antietam]] was a sufficient battlefield victory to enable him to release the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which gave the rebels 100 days to return to the Union or the actual proclamation would be issued.<ref>Guelzo (2004), p. 152.</ref>

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, naming ten states in which slaves would be "forever free". The proclamation did not name the states of Tennessee (because it was under Union control) or Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware (because, though slave states, they had not seceded) and specifically excluded numerous counties in some other states. Eventually, as the U.S. Army advanced into the Confederacy, millions of slaves were set free. Many of these freedmen joined the U.S. Army, as the Emancipation Proclamation authorized them to do, and fought in battles against the Confederate forces.<ref name="Williams 2006 pp. 54–59"/><ref name="Catton 1963 pp. 365–367"/>{{sfnp|Guelzo|2004|p=1}} Yet hundreds of thousands of freed slaves died during emancipation from illnesses that devastated army regiments. Freed slaves suffered from smallpox, yellow fever, and malnutrition.{{sfnp|Downs|2012|p=47}}

===Lincoln's 10% plan===
{{Main|Ten percent plan}}
Lincoln was determined to effect a speedy restoration of the Confederate states to the Union after the Civil War. In 1863, he proposed a moderate plan for the Reconstruction of the captured Confederate state of Louisiana. The plan granted amnesty to rebels who took an oath of loyalty to the Union. Black freedmen workers were tied to labor on plantations for one year at a pay rate of $10 a month.{{sfnp|Stauffer|2008|p=279}} Only 10% of the state's electorate had to take the loyalty oath in order for the state to be readmitted into the U.S. Congress. The state was required to abolish slavery in its new state constitution. Identical Reconstruction plans would be adopted in Arkansas and Tennessee. By December 1864, the Lincoln plan of Reconstruction had been enacted in Louisiana and the legislature sent two senators and five representatives to take their seats in Washington. However, Congress refused to count any of the votes from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, in essence rejecting Lincoln's moderate Reconstruction plan. Congress, at this time controlled by the Radicals, proposed the Wade–Davis Bill that required a majority of the state electorates to take the oath of loyalty to be admitted to Congress. Lincoln [[pocket veto]]ed the bill and the rift widened between the moderates, primarily concerned with preserving the Union and winning the war, and the Radicals, who wanted to effect a more complete change within Southern society.<ref name="Peterson 1995 pp. 38–41">{{Cite book |last=Peterson |first=Merrill D. |title=Lincoln in American Memory |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1995 |isbn=9780195065701 |location=New York |pages=38–41}}</ref><ref name="McCarthy 1901 p. 76">{{Cite book |last=McCarthy |first=Charles H. |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56039 |title=Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction |publisher=McClure, Phillips and Co. |year=1901 |location=New York |pages=76 |oclc=4672039 |via=Project Gutenberg}}</ref> Frederick Douglass denounced Lincoln's 10% electorate plan as undemocratic since state admission and loyalty only depended on a minority vote.{{sfnp|Stauffer|2008|p=280}}

===Legalization of slave marriages===
Before 1864, slave marriages had not been recognized legally; emancipation did not affect them.{{sfnp|Jones|2010|p=72}} When freed, many sought official marriages. Before emancipation, slaves could not enter into contracts, including the marriage contract. Not all free people formalized their unions. Some continued to have common-law marriages or community-recognized relationships.<ref name="The Making of the American South">{{cite book |last=Harris |first=J. William |url= |title=The Making of the American South: A Short History 1500–1877 |publisher=Blackwell Publishing |year=2006 |isbn=9780631209638 |location=Malden, Massachusetts |page=240 |doi=10.1002/9780470773338}}</ref> The acknowledgement of marriage by the state increased the state's recognition of freed people as legal actors and eventually helped make the case for parental rights for freed people against the practice of apprenticeship of Black children.<ref name="Gendered Strife and Confusion p53">{{cite book |last=Edwards |first=Laura F. |title=Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction |publisher=University of Illinois Press |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-252-02297-5 |location=Chicago |page=53}}</ref> These children were legally taken away from their families under the guise of "providing them with guardianship and 'good' homes until they reached the age of consent at twenty-one" under acts such as the Georgia 1866 Apprentice Act.{{sfnp|Hunter|1997|p=34}} Such children were generally used as sources of unpaid labor.

===Freedmen's Bureau===
{{Main|Freedmen's Bureau}}
[[File:Freedmen richmond sewing women.jpg|thumb|Northern teachers traveled into the South to provide education and training for the newly freed population.]]
On March 3, 1865, the [[Freedmen's Bureau Bill]] became law, sponsored by the Republicans to aid freedmen and White refugees. A federal bureau was created to provide food, clothing, fuel, and advice on negotiating labor contracts. It attempted to oversee new relations between freedmen and their former masters in a free labor market. The act, without deference to a person's color, authorized the bureau to lease confiscated land for a period of three years and to sell it in portions of up to {{convert|40|acres|0|abbr=on}} per buyer. The bureau was to expire one year after the termination of the war. Lincoln was assassinated before he could appoint a commissioner of the bureau.<ref>{{Cite web |title=U.S. Senate: Freedmen's Bureau Acts of 1865 and 1866 |url=https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/FreedmensBureau.htm |access-date=2025-03-05 |website=www.senate.gov}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=The Freedmen's Bureau: New Beginnings for Recently Freed African Americans |url=https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/freedmens-bureau-new-beginnings-recently-freed |access-date=2025-03-05 |website=National Museum of African American History and Culture |language=en}}</ref>

With the help of the bureau, the recently freed slaves began voting, forming political parties, and assuming the control of labor in many areas. The bureau helped to start a change of power in the South that drew national attention from the Republicans in the North to the Democrats in the South. This is especially evident in the [[1868 United States presidential election|election]] between Grant and Seymour (Johnson did not get the Democratic nomination), where almost 700,000 Black voters voted and swayed the election 300,000 votes in Grant's favor.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Even with the benefits that it gave to the freedmen, the Freedmen's Bureau was unable to operate effectively in certain areas. Terrorizing freedmen for trying to vote, hold a political office, or own land, the Ku Klux Klan was the nemesis of the Freedmen's Bureau.<ref>{{cite web |last=Mikkelson |first=Barbara |date=May 27, 2011 |title='Black Tax' Credit |url=https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/black-tax-credit/ |work=[[Snopes]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Freedmen's Bureau |encyclopedia=[[Tennessee Encyclopedia]] |url=http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=517 |access-date=April 29, 2010 |last=Zebley |first=Kathleen |date=October 8, 2017}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Belz |first=Herman |title=Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=1998 |isbn=9780823217694 |series=North's Civil War |volume=2 |location=New York |pages=138, 141, 145}}</ref>

===Bans color discrimination===
Other legislation was signed that broadened equality and rights for African Americans. Lincoln outlawed discrimination on account of color, in carrying U.S. mail, in riding on public street cars in Washington, D.C., and in pay for soldiers.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Rawley |first=James A. |title=Abraham Lincoln and a nation worth fighting for |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |year=2003 |isbn=9780803289949 |location=Lincoln |pages=205}}</ref>

===February 1865 peace conference===
{{main|Hampton Roads Conference}}
Lincoln and Secretary of State [[William H. Seward]] met with three Southern representatives to discuss the peaceful Reconstruction of the Union and the Confederacy on February 3, 1865, in [[Hampton Roads, Virginia|Hampton Roads]], Virginia. The Southern delegation included Confederate Vice President [[Alexander H. Stephens]], [[John Archibald Campbell]], and [[Robert M. T. Hunter]]. The Southerners proposed the Union recognition of the Confederacy, a joint Union–Confederate attack on Mexico to oust Emperor [[Maximilian I of Mexico|Maximilian I]], and an alternative subordinate status of servitude for Blacks rather than slavery. Lincoln flatly rejected recognition of the Confederacy, and said that the slaves covered by his Emancipation Proclamation would not be re-enslaved. He said that the Union states were about to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery. Lincoln urged the governor of Georgia to remove Confederate troops and "ratify this constitutional amendment {{em|prospectively}}, so as to take effect—say in five years... Slavery is doomed." Lincoln also urged compensated emancipation for the slaves as he thought the North should be willing to share the costs of freedom. Although the meeting was cordial, the parties did not settle on agreements.{{sfnp|McFeely|2002|pp=198–207}}

===Historical legacy debated===
Lincoln continued to advocate his Louisiana Plan as a model for all states up until his assassination on April 15, 1865. The plan successfully started the Reconstruction process of ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment in all states. Lincoln is typically portrayed as taking the moderate position and fighting the Radical positions. There is considerable debate on how well Lincoln, had he lived, would have handled Congress during the Reconstruction process that took place after the Civil War ended. One historical camp argues that Lincoln's flexibility, pragmatism, and superior political skills with Congress would have solved Reconstruction with far less difficulty. The other camp believes that the Radicals would have attempted to impeach Lincoln, just as they did to his successor, Andrew Johnson, in 1868.{{sfnp|Harris|1997|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}<ref name="Peterson 1995 pp. 38–41"/>

==Johnson's presidential Reconstruction==
{{Main|Presidency of Andrew Johnson}}
{{further|Andrew Johnson and slavery}}
{{Andrew Johnson series}}

[[File:Collage of Andy Johnson cartoon depictions by Thomas Nast.jpg|thumb|''Harper's Weekly'' cartoonist [[Thomas Nast]] regularly skewered Andrew Johnson's reconstruction policies as dangerous and destructive; clockwise from top left: Johnson as a [[Medusa]]-headed [[Lady Justice]] in ''[[Southern Justice (political cartoon)|Southern Justice]]'', Johnson as [[Iago]] to a wounded soldier of the [[United States Colored Troops|U.S. Colored Troops]] as [[Othello (character)|Othello]], King Andy with "prime minister" [[William H. Seward|Seward]], and Johnson as [[Nero|Emperor Nero]] with Seward in ''[[Amphitheatrum Johnsonianum]]'' ]]
Northern anger over the assassination of Lincoln and the immense human cost of the war led to demands for punitive policies. Vice President [[Andrew Johnson]] had taken a hard line and spoke of hanging Confederates, but when he succeeded Lincoln as president, Johnson took a much softer position, pardoning many Confederate leaders and other former Confederates.{{sfnp|Trefousse|1989|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}} Former Confederate President [[Jefferson Davis]] was held in prison for two years, but other Confederate leaders were not. There were no trials on charges of treason. Only three people—Captain [[Henry Wirz]], the commandant of the [[Andersonville prison|prison camp]] in [[Andersonville, Georgia]], and guerilla leaders [[Champ Ferguson]] and [[Henry C. Magruder]]—were ever executed for war crimes. Andrew Johnson's racist view of Reconstruction did not include the involvement of blacks in government, and he refused to heed Northern concerns when Southern state legislatures implemented [[Black Codes (United States)|Black Codes]] that set the status of the freedmen much lower than that of white people.<ref name="Foner 2009"/>

Smith argues that "Johnson attempted to carry forward what he considered to be Lincoln's plans for Reconstruction."<ref>{{cite book |last=Smith |first=John David |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TpInTOhPf1sC&pg=PT17 |title=A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction |publisher=Penguin |year=2013 |isbn=9781101617465 |page=17}}</ref> McKitrick says that in 1865 Johnson had strong support in the Republican Party, saying: "It was naturally from the great moderate sector of Unionist opinion in the North that Johnson could draw his greatest comfort."<ref>{{cite book |last=McKitrick |first=Eric L. |url=https://archive.org/details/andrewjohnsonrec00mcki |title=Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1988 |isbn=9780195057072 |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/andrewjohnsonrec00mcki/page/172 172] |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref> Ray Allen Billington says: "One faction, the [[Moderate Republicans (Reconstruction era)|moderate Republicans]] under the leadership of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, favored a mild policy toward the South."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Billington |first1=Ray Allen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X9FWZLCfi4gC&pg=PA3 |title=American History After 1865 |last2=Ridge |first2=Martin |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=1981 |isbn=9780822600275 |location=Totowa, NJ |page=3 |author2-link=Martin Ridge (historian)}}</ref> David A. Lincove, citing Lincoln biographers [[James G. Randall]] and [[Richard N. Current]], argued that:<ref>{{cite book |last=Lincove |first=David A. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3EQcT7-Dpi0C&pg=PA80 |title=Reconstruction in the United States: An Annotated Bibliography |publisher=Greenwood |year=2000 |isbn=9780313291999 |location=Westport, Conn. |page=80}} citing {{Cite book |last1=Randall |first1=J. G. |title=Lincoln the President: Last Full Measure |last2=Current |first2=Richard N. |publisher=Dodd, Mead & Company |year=1955 |location=New York |oclc=5852442}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=It is likely that had he lived, Lincoln would have followed a policy similar to Johnson's, that he would have clashed with congressional Radicals, that he would have produced a better result for the freedmen than occurred, and that his political skills would have helped him avoid Johnson's mistakes.}}

Historians generally agree that President Johnson was an inept politician who lost all his advantages by unskilled maneuvering. He broke with Congress in early 1866 and then became defiant and tried to block enforcement of Reconstruction laws passed by the U.S. Congress. He was in constant conflict constitutionally with the Radicals in Congress over the status of freedmen and whites in the defeated South.{{sfnp|McFeely|1974|p=125}} Although resigned to the abolition of slavery, many former Confederates were unwilling to accept both social changes and political domination by former slaves. In the words of [[Benjamin Franklin Perry]], President Johnson's choice as the provisional governor of South Carolina: "First, the Negro is to be invested with all political power, and then the antagonism of interest between capital and labor is to work out the result."{{sfnp|Barney|1987|p=245}}

However, the fears of the planter elite and other leading white citizens were partly assuaged by the actions of President Johnson, who ensured that a wholesale land redistribution from the planters to the freedmen did not occur. President Johnson ordered that confiscated or abandoned lands administered by the Freedmen's Bureau would not be redistributed to the freedmen but would be returned to pardoned owners. Land was returned that would have been forfeited under the Confiscation Acts passed by Congress in 1861 and 1862.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}} Johnson repudiated Sherman's Special Field Order Number 15, the source of the "[[Forty acres and a mule|40 acres and a mule]]" promise of reparations for former slaves.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lightweis-Goff |first=Jennie |title=Captive city: meditations on slavery in the urban south |date=2025 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |isbn=978-1-5128-2668-5 |location=Philadelphia |pages=117 |language=en-us}}</ref>

===Freedmen and the enactment of Black Codes===
{{Main|Black Codes (United States)}}
[[File:The Union as It Was.jpg|thumb|An October 24th, 1874 [[Harper's Magazine]] editorial cartoon by [[Thomas Nast]] denouncing KKK and White League murders of innocent Blacks]]

Southern state governments quickly enacted the restrictive "[[Black Codes (United States)|Black Codes]]". However, they were abolished in 1866 and seldom had effect, because the Freedmen's Bureau (not the local courts) handled the legal affairs of freedmen.

The Black Codes indicated the plans of the Southern whites for the former slaves.{{sfnp|Donald |Baker |Holt |2001|loc=ch. 31}} The freedmen would have more rights than did free Blacks before the war, but they would still have only second-class civil rights, no voting rights, and no citizenship. They could not own firearms, serve on a jury in a lawsuit involving whites, or move about without employment.{{sfnp|Oberholtzer|1917|pp=128–129}} The Black Codes outraged Northern opinion. They were overthrown by the [[Civil Rights Act of 1866]] that gave the freedmen more legal equality (although still without the right to vote).{{sfnp|Donald|Baker|Holt|2001|p=527}}

The freedmen, with the strong backing of the Freedmen's Bureau, rejected [[Gang system|gang labor]] work patterns that had been used in slavery. Instead of gang labor, freed people preferred family-based labor groups.{{sfnp|Hunter|1997|p=67}} They forced planters to bargain for their labor. Such bargaining soon led to the establishment of the system of [[sharecropping]], which gave the freedmen greater economic independence and social autonomy than gang labor. However, because they lacked capital and the planters continued to own the means of production (tools, draft animals, and land), the freedmen were forced into producing cash crops (mainly cotton) for the land-owners and merchants, and they entered into a [[crop-lien system]]. Widespread poverty, disruption to an agricultural economy too dependent on cotton, and the falling price of cotton, led within decades to the routine indebtedness of the majority of the freedmen, and the poverty of many planters.{{sfnp|Barney|1987|pp=251, 284–286}}

Northern officials gave varying reports on conditions for the freedmen in the South. One harsh assessment came from [[Carl Schurz]], who reported on the situation in the states along the Gulf Coast. His report documented dozens of [[extrajudicial killing]]s and claimed that hundreds or thousands more African Americans were killed:<ref name="Schurz 1865">{{cite report |first=Carl |last=Schurz |author-link=Carl Schurz |title=Report on the Condition of the South |date=December 1865 |id=U.S. Senate Exec. Doc. No. 2, 39th Congress, 1st session |url= http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/etext05/cnsth10.htm |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20071014083500/http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/etext05/cnsth10.htm |archive-date=October 14, 2007}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=The number of murders and assaults perpetrated upon Negroes is very great; we can form only an approximative estimate of what is going on in those parts of the South which are not closely garrisoned, and from which no regular reports are received, by what occurs under the very eyes of our military authorities. As to my personal experience, I will only mention that during my two days sojourn at Atlanta, one Negro was stabbed with fatal effect on the street, and three were poisoned, one of whom died. While I was at Montgomery, one Negro was cut across the throat evidently with intent to kill, and another was shot, but both escaped with their lives. Several papers attached to this report give an account of the number of capital cases that occurred at certain places during a certain period of time. It is a sad fact that the perpetration of those acts is not confined to that class of people which might be called the rabble.}}

The report included sworn testimony from soldiers and officials of the Freedmen's Bureau. In [[Selma, Alabama]], Major J. P. Houston noted that whites who killed 12 African Americans in his district never came to trial. Many more killings never became official cases. Captain Poillon described white patrols in southwestern Alabama:<ref name="Schurz 1865" />
{{blockquote|1=who board some of the boats; after the boats leave they hang, shoot, or drown the victims they may find on them, and all those found on the roads or coming down the rivers are almost invariably murdered. The bewildered and terrified freedmen know not what to do—to leave is death; to remain is to suffer the increased burden imposed upon them by the cruel taskmaster, whose only interest is their labor, wrung from them by every device an inhuman ingenuity can devise; hence the lash and murder is resorted to intimidate those whom fear of an awful death alone cause to remain, while patrols, Negro dogs and spies, disguised as Yankees, keep constant guard over these unfortunate people.}}

Much of the violence that was perpetrated against African Americans was shaped by gender prejudices regarding African Americans. Black women were in a particularly vulnerable situation. To convict a white man of sexually assaulting Black women in this period was exceedingly difficult.{{sfnp|Hunter|1997}}{{Page needed|date=February 2024}} The South's judicial system had been wholly refigured to make one of its primary purposes the coercion of African Americans to comply with the social customs and labor demands of whites.{{explain|date=January 2021}}{{citation needed|date=January 2021}} Trials were discouraged and attorneys for Black misdemeanor defendants were difficult to find. The goal of county courts was a fast, uncomplicated trial with a resulting conviction. Most Blacks were unable to pay their fines or bail, and "the most common penalty was nine months to a year in a slave mine or lumber camp".<ref>{{cite book |last=Blackmon |first=Douglas A. |title=Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II |publisher=Anchor Books |year=2009 |isbn=9780385722704 |location=New York |page=16}}</ref> The South's judicial system was rigged to generate fees and claim bounties, not to ensure public protection. Black women were socially perceived as sexually avaricious and since they were portrayed as having little virtue, society held that they could not be raped.<ref name="Gendered Strife and Confusion p202">{{cite book |last=Edwards |first=Laura F. |title=Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction |date=1997 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |location=Chicago |isbn=978-0-252-02297-5 |page=202}}</ref> One report indicates two freed women, Frances Thompson and Lucy Smith, described their violent sexual assault during the [[Memphis Riots of 1866]].<ref name="Freedwomen and the Freedmen's Bureau">{{cite book |last=Farmer-Kaiser |first=Mary |title=Freedwomen and the Freedmen's Bureau: Race, Gender, and Public Policy in the Age of Emancipation |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=2010 |isbn=9780823234943 |location=New York |page=160}}</ref> However, Black women were vulnerable even in times of relative normalcy. Sexual assaults on African-American women were so pervasive, particularly on the part of their white employers, that Black men sought to reduce the contact between white males and Black females by having the women in their family avoid doing work that was closely overseen by whites.{{sfnp|Jones|2010|p=70}} Black men were construed as being extremely sexually aggressive and their supposed or rumored threats to white women were often used as a pretext for [[lynching]] and castrations.{{sfnp|Hunter|1997|pp=21–73}}

===Moderate responses===
During fall 1865, out of response to the Black Codes and worrisome signs of Southern recalcitrance, the Radical Republicans blocked the readmission of the former rebellious states to the Congress. Johnson, however, was content with allowing former Confederate states into the Union as long as their state governments adopted the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. By December 6, 1865, the amendment was ratified and Johnson considered Reconstruction over. According to [[James Schouler]] writing in 1913, Johnson was following the moderate Lincoln presidential Reconstruction policy to get the states readmitted as soon as possible.<ref name="Schouler 1913 43–57" />

Congress, however, controlled by the Radicals, had other plans. The Radicals were led by [[Charles Sumner]] in the Senate and [[Thaddeus Stevens]] in the House of Representatives. Congress, on December 4, 1865, rejected Johnson's moderate presidential Reconstruction, and organized the [[Joint Committee on Reconstruction]], a 15-member panel to devise Reconstruction requirements for the Southern states to be restored to the Union.<ref name="Schouler 1913 43–57">{{Cite book |last=Schouler |first=James |url=https://archive.org/details/historyunitedst12schogoog |title=History of the United States of America under the Constitution |publisher=Kraus Reprints |year=1913 |edition=Revised |volume=7: The Reconstruction Period |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyunitedst12schogoog/page/n69 43]–57 |oclc=1540160 |access-date=July 3, 2010 |via=Archive.org}}</ref>

In January 1866, Congress renewed the Freedmen's Bureau; however, Johnson vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau Bill in February 1866. Although Johnson had sympathy for the plight of the freedmen,{{Citation needed|date=January 2024}} he was against federal assistance. An attempt to override the veto failed on February 20, 1866. This veto shocked the congressional Radicals. In response, both the Senate and House passed a joint resolution not to allow any senator or representative seat admittance until Congress decided when Reconstruction was finished.<ref name="Schouler 1913 43–57" />

Senator [[Lyman Trumbull]] of [[Illinois]], leader of the moderate Republicans, took affront to the Black Codes. He proposed the first [[Civil Rights Act of 1866|Civil Rights Act]], because the abolition of slavery was empty if:{{sfnp|Rhodes|1920|loc=v. 6: pp. 65–66}}
{{blockquote|1=laws are to be enacted and enforced depriving persons of African descent of privileges which are essential to freemen.... A law that does not allow a colored person to go from one county to another, and one that does not allow him to hold property, to teach, to preach, are certainly laws in violation of the rights of a freeman... The purpose of this bill is to destroy all these discriminations.}}

The key to the bill was the opening section:{{quote without source|date=October 2020}}
{{blockquote|1=All persons born in the United States&nbsp;... are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery&nbsp;... shall have the same right in every State&nbsp;... to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom to the Contrary notwithstanding.}}

The bill did not give freedmen the right to vote. Congress quickly passed the Civil Rights Bill; the Senate on February 2 voted 33–12; the House on March 13 voted 111–38.

===Johnson's vetoes===
[[File:Freedman's bureau.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|The debate over Reconstruction and the [[Freedmen's Bureau]] was nationwide. This 1866 Pennsylvania election poster alleged that the bureau kept the Negro in idleness at the expense of the hardworking white taxpayer. A racist [[caricature]] of an African American is depicted.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/section4/section4_11.html |work=America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War |title=The Freedman's Bureau, 1866 |at=image 11 of 40 |publisher=Digital History Project, University of Houston |access-date=October 11, 2006 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20060924004559/http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/section4/section4_11.html |archive-date=September 24, 2006 |url-status=dead}}</ref>]]
[[File:Harper's Weekly cover 1865 July 29.jpg|thumb|''Harper's Weekly'' cover of July 29, 1865; the text in the planter's [[speech balloon]] reads "My boy, we've toiled and taken care of you long enough. Now you've got to work!"]]
Although strongly urged by moderates in Congress to sign the Civil Rights bill, Johnson broke decisively with them by vetoing it on March 27, 1866. His veto message objected to the measure because it conferred citizenship on the freedmen at a time when 11 out of 36 states were unrepresented and attempted to fix by federal law "a perfect equality of the white and black races in every state of the Union". Johnson said it was an invasion by federal authority of the rights of the states; it had no warrant in the Constitution and was contrary to all precedents. It was a "stride toward centralization and the concentration of all legislative power in the national government".{{sfnp|Rhodes|1920|loc=v. 6: p. 68}}

The Democratic Party, proclaiming itself the party of white men, North and South, supported Johnson.{{sfnp|Trefousse|1989|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}} However, the Republicans in Congress overrode his veto (the Senate by the close vote of 33–15, and the House by 122–41) and the [[Civil Rights Act of 1866|civil rights bill]] became law. Congress also passed a watered-down Freedmen's Bureau bill; Johnson quickly vetoed as he had done to the previous bill. Once again, however, Congress had enough support and overrode Johnson's veto.<ref name="Alexander Rucker"/>

The last moderate proposal was the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]], whose principal drafter was Representative [[John Bingham]]. It was designed to put the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act into the Constitution, but it went much further. It extended citizenship to everyone born in the United States (except [[Native Americans in the United States|Indians]] on reservations), penalized states that did not give the vote to freedmen, and most important, created new federal civil rights that could be protected by federal courts. It guaranteed the federal war debt would be paid (and promised the Confederate debt would never be paid). Johnson used his influence to block the amendment in the states since three-fourths of the states were required for ratification (the amendment was later ratified). The moderate effort to compromise with Johnson had failed, and a political fight broke out between the Republicans (both Radical and moderate) on one side, and on the other side, Johnson and his allies in the Democratic Party in the North, and the groupings (which used different names) in each Southern state.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

==Congressional Reconstruction==
[[File:Seymour US Reconstruction antidem poster.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|1868 Republican cartoon identifies Democratic candidates Seymour and Blair (right) with KKK violence and with Confederate soldiers (left).]]
Concerned by multiple reports of abuse of black freedmen by Southern white officials and plantation owners, Republicans in Congress took control of Reconstruction policies after the election of 1866.{{sfnp|Foner|2014b|pp=224–227}} Johnson ignored the policy mandate, and he openly encouraged Southern states to deny ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment (except for Tennessee, all former Confederate states did refuse to ratify, as did the border states of Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky). Radical Republicans in Congress, led by Stevens and Sumner, opened the way to suffrage for male freedmen. They were generally in control, although they had to compromise with the moderate Republicans (the Democrats in Congress had almost no power). Historians refer to this period as "Radical Reconstruction" or "congressional Reconstruction".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Teed |first1=Paul E. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kpMeCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA51 |title=Reconstruction: A Reference Guide |last2=Ladd Teed |first2=Melissa |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2015 |isbn=978-1-61069-533-6 |location=Santa Barbara |pages=51, 174&nbsp;ff}}. Foner (1988) entitles his sixth chapter "The Making of Radical Reconstruction". Benedict argues the Radical Republicans were conservative on many other issues, in: {{cite journal |last=Benedict |first=Michael Les |date=1974 |title=Preserving the Constitution: The Conservative Basis of Radical Reconstruction |journal=[[Journal of American History]] |volume=61 |issue=1 |pages=65–90 |doi=10.2307/1918254 |jstor=1918254}}</ref> The business spokesmen in the North generally opposed Radical proposals. Analysis of 34 major business newspapers showed that 12 discussed politics, and only one, ''[[Iron Age (newspaper)|Iron Age]]'', supported radicalism. The other 11 opposed a "harsh" Reconstruction policy, favored the speedy return of the Southern states to congressional representation, opposed legislation designed to protect the freedmen, and deplored the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kolchin |first=Peter |date=1967 |title=The Business Press and Reconstruction, 1865–1868 |journal=[[Journal of Southern History]] |volume=33 |issue=2 |pages=183–196 |doi=10.2307/2204965 |jstor=2204965}}</ref>

The South's White leaders, who held power in the immediate post-bellum era before the vote was granted to the freedmen, renounced secession and slavery, but not White supremacy. People who had previously held power were angered in 1867 when new elections were held. New Republican lawmakers were elected by a coalition of White Unionists, freedmen and Northerners who had settled in the South. Some leaders in the South tried to accommodate new conditions.

===Constitutional amendments===
Three constitutional amendments, known as the Reconstruction amendments, were adopted. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified in 1865. The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, guaranteeing [[United States citizenship]] to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and granting them federal civil rights. The Fifteenth Amendment, proposed in late February 1869, and passed in early February 1870, decreed that the right to vote could not be denied because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". Left unaffected was that states would still determine voter registration and electoral laws. The amendments were directed at ending slavery and providing full citizenship to freedmen. Northern congressmen believed that providing Black men with the right to vote would be the most rapid means of political education and training.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Many Blacks took an active part in voting and political life, and rapidly continued to build churches and community organizations. Following Reconstruction, White Democrats and insurgent groups used force to regain power in the state legislatures, and pass laws that effectively [[Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era|disenfranchised]] most Blacks and many poor Whites in the South. From 1890 to 1910, Southern states passed new state constitutions that completed the disenfranchisement of Blacks. U.S. Supreme Court rulings on these provisions upheld many of these new Southern state constitutions and laws, and most Blacks were prevented from voting in the South until the 1960s. Full federal enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments did not reoccur until after passage of legislation in the mid-1960s as a result of the [[civil rights movement]].{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

===Statutes===
The [[Reconstruction Acts]], as originally passed, were initially called "An act to provide for the more efficient Government of the Rebel States".<ref>{{cite web |title=A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875 |url=http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=014/llsl014.db&recNum=459 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201203193317/http://www.memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=014%2Fllsl014.db&recNum=459 |archive-date=December 3, 2020 |access-date=October 21, 2020 |website=[[American Memory]]}}</ref> The legislation was enacted by the 39th Congress, on March 2, 1867. It was vetoed by President Johnson, and the veto then overridden by a two-thirds majority, in both the House and the Senate, the same day. Congress also clarified the scope of the federal writ of [[habeas corpus]], to allow federal courts to [[Vacated judgment|vacate]] unlawful state court convictions or sentences, in 1867.<ref>28 [[United States Code|U.S.C.]] §&nbsp;2254.</ref>

===Military Reconstruction<!-- Section linked from Arkansas -->===
[[File:Reconstruction military districts.svg|thumb|right|upright=1.5|Map of the five Reconstruction military districts
{{Legend|#000|[[First Military District]]}}
{{Legend|#009F6B|[[Second Military District]]}}
{{Legend|#C40233|[[Third Military District]]}}
{{Legend|#FFD300|[[Fourth Military District]]}}
{{Legend|#0087BD|[[Fifth Military District]]}}]]
With the Radicals in control, Congress passed the [[Reconstruction Act]]s on July 19, 1867. The first Reconstruction Act, authored by Oregon Sen. [[George Henry Williams]], a [[Radical Republican]], placed 10 of the former Confederate states—all but Tennessee—under military control, grouping them into five military districts:{{sfnp|Foner|1988|loc= ch. 6}}
* [[First Military District]]: Virginia, under General [[John Schofield]]
* [[Second Military District]]: North Carolina and South Carolina, under General [[Daniel Sickles]]
* [[Third Military District]]: Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, under Generals [[John Pope (general)|John Pope]] and [[George Meade]]
* [[Fourth Military District]]: Arkansas and Mississippi, under General [[Edward Ord]]
* [[Fifth Military District]]: Texas and Louisiana, under Generals [[Philip Sheridan]] and [[Winfield Scott Hancock]]

20,000 U.S. troops were deployed to enforce the act.

The five [[Border states (American Civil War)|border states]] that had not joined the Confederacy were not subject to military Reconstruction. West Virginia, which had [[West Virginia in the American Civil War|seceded]] from Virginia in 1863, and Tennessee, which had already been re-admitted in 1866, were not included in the military districts. Federal troops, however, were kept in West Virginia through 1868 in order to control civil unrest in several areas throughout the state.<ref>{{Citation |title=Journal of the Senate of the State of West Virginia for the Sixth Session, Commencing January 21, 1868 |date=1868 |pages=10 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gzotAQAAMAAJ |place=Wheeling |publisher=John Frew |via=Google Books}}</ref> Federal troops were removed from Kentucky and Missouri in 1866.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Phillips |first=Christopher |title=The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2016 |isbn=9780199720170 |edition=1st |location=New York |pages=296}}</ref>

The 10 Southern state governments were re-constituted under the direct control of the United States Army. One major purpose was to recognize and protect the right of African Americans to vote.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Chin |first1=Gabriel Jackson |date=September 14, 2004 |title=The 'Voting Rights Act of 1867': The Constitutionality of Federal Regulation of Suffrage During Reconstruction |journal=North Carolina Law Review |volume=82 |issue=5 |pages=1581 |ssrn=589301}}</ref> There was little to no combat, but rather a state of [[martial law]] in which the military closely supervised local government, supervised elections, and tried to protect office holders and freedmen from violence.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|loc=ch. 6–7}} Blacks were enrolled as voters; former Confederate leaders were excluded for a limited period.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=274–275}} No one state was entirely representative. Randolph Campbell describes what happened in Texas:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Campbell |first=Randolph B. |title=Gone to Texas: a history of the Lone Star State |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-19-513842-9 |location=New York |page=276}}</ref>{{sfnp|Rhodes|1920|loc=v. 6: p. 199}}
{{blockquote|1=The first critical step&nbsp;... was the registration of voters according to guidelines established by Congress and interpreted by Generals Sheridan and Charles Griffin. The Reconstruction Acts called for registering all adult males, white and black, except those who had ever sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and then engaged in rebellion.... Sheridan interpreted these restrictions stringently, barring from registration not only all pre-1861 officials of state and local governments who had supported the Confederacy but also all city officeholders and even minor functionaries such as sextons of cemeteries. In May Griffin&nbsp;... appointed a three-man board of registrars for each county, making his choices on the advice of known scalawags and local Freedmen's Bureau agents. In every county where practicable a freedman served as one of the three registrars.... Final registration amounted to approximately 59,633 whites and 49,479 blacks. It is impossible to say how many whites were rejected or refused to register (estimates vary from 7,500 to 12,000), but blacks, who constituted only about 30 percent of the state's population, were significantly over-represented at 45 percent of all voters.}}

===State constitutional conventions: 1867–1869===
The 11 Southern states held constitutional conventions giving Black men the right to vote,{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=316–333}} where the factions divided into the Radical, "[[Conservative Republicans (Reconstruction era)|conservative]]", and in-between delegates.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hume |first1=Richard L. |title=Blacks, Carpetbaggers, and Scalawags: the Constitutional Conventions of Radical Reconstruction |last2=Gough |first2=Jerry B. |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=2008 |isbn=9780807133248 |location=Baton Rouge}}</ref> The Radicals were a coalition: 40% were Southern White Republicans; 25% were White and 34% were Black.<ref>{{cite conference |first1=Jeffery A. |last1=Jenkins |first2=Boris |last2=Heersink |title=Republican Party Politics and the American South: From Reconstruction to Redemption, 1865–1880 |url=http://faculty.virginia.edu/jajenkins/Jenkins%20Heersink%20SPSA%202016.pdf |date=June 4, 2016 |page=18 |conference=2016 Annual Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico |url-status=dead |archive-date=2016-04-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160418074800/http://faculty.virginia.edu/jajenkins/Jenkins%20Heersink%20SPSA%202016.pdf}}</ref> In addition to expanding the franchise, they pressed for provisions designed to promote economic growth, especially financial aid to rebuild the ruined railroad system.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=323–325}}{{sfnp|Summers|2014a|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}} The conventions set up systems of free public schools funded by tax dollars, but did not require them to be racially integrated.<ref name="Tyack Lowe">{{cite journal |first1=David |last1=Tyack |first2=Robert |last2=Lowe |title=The constitutional moment: Reconstruction and Black education in the South |journal=[[American Journal of Education]] |date=1986 |volume=94 |issue=2 |pages=236–256 |jstor=1084950 |doi=10.1086/443844|s2cid=143849662}}</ref>
[[File:This is a White Man's Government.jpg|thumb|right|"This is a white man's government", [[Thomas Nast]]'s caricature of the forces arraigned against Grant and Reconstruction in the 1868 election. Atop a black Union veteran reaching for a ballot box: the New York City Irish; Confederate and Klansman [[Nathan Bedford Forrest]]; and big-money Democratic Party chairman [[August Belmont]], a burning freedmen's school in the background. ''[[Harper's Weekly]]'', September 5, 1868.]]
Until 1872, most former Confederate or prewar Southern office holders were disqualified from voting or holding office; all but 500 top Confederate leaders were pardoned by the [[Amnesty Act of 1872]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Cooper |first1=William J. Jr. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=foGTgJkUOTEC&pg=PA436 |title=The American South: A History |last2=Terrill |first2=Thomas E. |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-7425-6450-3 |edition=4th |location=Lanham |page=436 |author1-link=William J. Cooper Jr.}}</ref> "Proscription" was the policy of disqualifying as many ex-Confederates as possible. For example, in 1865 Tennessee had disenfranchised 80,000 ex-Confederates.{{sfnp|Zuczek|2006 |loc=Vol. 2 p. 635}} However, proscription was soundly rejected by the Black element, which insisted on universal suffrage.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=324}}{{sfnp|Perman|1985|pp=36–37}} The issue would come up repeatedly in several states, especially in Texas and Virginia. In Virginia, an effort was made to disqualify for public office every man who had served in the Confederate Army even as a private, and any civilian farmer who sold food to the Confederate States Army.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gillette |first=William |title=Retreat from reconstruction: 1869–1879 |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=1982 |isbn=9780807110065 |edition= |location=Baton Rouge |pages=99}}</ref>{{sfnp|Zuczek|2006 |loc=Vol. 1 p. 323; Vol. 2 pp. 645, 698}} Disenfranchising Southern Whites was also opposed by moderate Republicans in the North, who felt that ending proscription would bring the South closer to a republican form of government based on the [[consent of the governed]], as called for by the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Strong measures that were called for in order to forestall a return to the defunct Confederacy increasingly seemed out of place, and the role of the United States Army and controlling politics in the state was troublesome. Historian Mark Summers states that increasingly "the disenfranchisers had to fall back on the contention that denial of the vote was meant as punishment, and a lifelong punishment at that&nbsp;... Month by month, the un-[[Republicanism|republican]] character of the regime looked more glaring."{{sfnp|Summers|2014|pp=160–161}}

===Election of 1868===
{{Main|1868 United States presidential election}}
During the Civil War, many in the North believed that fighting for the Union was a noble cause—for the preservation of the Union and the end of slavery. After the war ended, with the North victorious, the fear among Radicals was that President Johnson too quickly assumed that slavery and Confederate nationalism were dead and that the Southern states could return. The Radicals sought out a candidate for president who represented their viewpoint.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|pp=455–457}}

In May 1868, the Republicans unanimously chose [[Ulysses S. Grant]] as their presidential candidate, and [[Schuyler Colfax]] as their vice-presidential candidate.{{sfnp|Calhoun|2017|pp=41–42}} Grant won favor with the Radicals after he allowed [[Edwin Stanton]], a Radical, to be reinstated as secretary of war. As early as 1862, during the Civil War, Grant had appointed the Ohio military chaplain [[John Eaton (General)|John Eaton]] to protect and gradually incorporate refugee slaves in west Tennessee and northern Mississippi into the Union war effort and pay them for their labor. It was the beginning of his vision for the Freedmen's Bureau.<ref>{{cite book |last=Simpson |first=Brooks D. |title=The Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction: Reconsiderations |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=1999 |isbn=9780823219346 |editor1=Cimbala |editor-first=Paul A. |edition=1st |place=New York |chapter=Ulysses S. Grant and the Freedmen's Bureau |editor2=Miller |editor-first2=Randall M. |name-list-style=amp}}</ref> Grant opposed President Johnson by supporting the Reconstruction Acts passed by the Radicals.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|pp=437–453, 458–460}}

In northern cities Grant contended with a strong immigrant, and particularly in New York City an Irish, anti-Reconstructionist Democratic bloc.<ref name="Montgomery">{{cite book |last1=Montgomery |first1=David |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ktsm2lS5BegC&pg=PA130 |title=Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 |publisher=Alfred Knopf |year=1967 |isbn=9780252008696 |location=New York |pages=130–133 |access-date=9 October 2020 |via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gleeson |first=David |date=2016 |title=Failing to 'unite with the abolitionists': the Irish Nationalist Press and U.S. emancipation |journal=Slavery & Abolition |volume=37 |issue=3 |pages=622–637 |doi=10.1080/0144039x.2016.1208911 |issn=0144-039X|doi-access=free }}</ref> Republicans sought to make inroads campaigning for the Irish taken prisoner in the [[Fenian raids]] into Canada, and calling on the [[Presidency of Andrew Johnson|Johnson administration]] to recognize a lawful state of war between Ireland and England. In 1867 Grant personally intervened with [[David Bell (Irish Republican)|David Bell]] and [[Michael Scanlon (poet)|Michael Scanlon]] to move their paper, the ''Irish Republic'', articulate in its support for black equality, to New York from Chicago.<ref name="Knight">{{cite journal |last1=Knight |first1=Matthew |date=2017 |title=The Irish Republic: Reconstructing Liberty, Right Principles, and the Fenian Brotherhood |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/680371/summary |url-status=live |journal=Éire-Ireland |publisher=Irish-American Cultural Institute |volume=52 |issue=3 & 4 |pages=252–271 |doi=10.1353/eir.2017.0029 |s2cid=159525524 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201201141335/https://muse.jhu.edu/article/680371/summary |archive-date=December 1, 2020 |access-date=9 October 2020|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name="Yanoso">{{cite book |last1=Yanoso |first1=Nicole Anderson |title=The Irish and the American Presidency |publisher=[[Routledge]] |year=2017 |isbn=9781351480635 |location=New York |pages=75–80}}</ref>

The Democrats, having abandoned Johnson, nominated former governor [[Horatio Seymour]] of New York for president and [[Francis Preston Blair Jr.|Francis P. Blair]] of Missouri for vice president.{{sfnp|Simon|2002|p=245}} The Democrats advocated the immediate restoration of former Confederate states to the Union and amnesty from "all past political offenses".{{sfnp|Peters|Woolley|2018b}}

Grant won the popular vote by 300,000 votes out of 5,716,082 votes cast, receiving an [[Electoral College (United States)|Electoral College]] landslide of 214 votes to Seymour's 80.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|p=461}} Seymour received a majority of white votes, but Grant was aided by 500,000 votes cast by blacks,{{sfnp|Simon|2002|p=245}} winning him 52.7 percent of the popular vote.{{sfnp|Calhoun|2017|p=55}} He lost Louisiana and Georgia primarily due to [[Ku Klux Klan]] violence against African-American voters.{{sfnp|Foner|2014a|pp=243–244}} At the age of 46, Grant was the youngest president yet elected, and the first president elected after the nation had outlawed slavery.{{sfnp|McFeely|2002|p=284}}{{sfnp|Smith|2001|p=461}}{{sfnp|White|2016|p=471}}

==Grant's presidential Reconstruction==
{{Main|Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant}}
[[File:Ulysses S Grant by Brady c1870-restored.jpg|thumb|right|upright|[[Ulysses S. Grant]], 18th [[President of the United States]] (1869–1877)]]
{{Ulysses S. Grant series}}

===Effective civil rights executive===
President [[Ulysses S. Grant]] was considered an effective civil rights executive, concerned about the plight of [[African Americans]].{{sfnp|Kahan|2018|p=61}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Brands |first=H. W. |title=The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace |publisher=Anchor Books |year=2013 |isbn=9780307475152 |location=New York |pages=463–479}}</ref> Grant met with prominent black leaders for consultation and signed a bill into law, on March 18, 1869, that guaranteed equal rights to both blacks and whites, to serve on juries, and hold office, in Washington D.C.{{sfnp|Kahan|2018|p=61}}<ref name=Spxiii/> In 1870 Grant signed into law a [[Naturalization Act of 1870|Naturalization Act]] that opened a path to citizenship for foreign-born Black residents in the US.{{sfnp|Kahan|2018|p=61}} Additionally, Grant's [[United States Postmaster General|Postmaster General]], [[John Creswell]] used his patronage powers to integrate the postal system and appointed a record number of African-American men and women as postal workers across the nation, while also expanding many of the mail routes.{{sfnp|Osborne|Bombaro|2015|pp=6, 12, 54}}{{sfnp|Chernow|2017|p=629}} Grant appointed Republican abolitionist and champion of black education [[Hugh Lennox Bond]] as U.S. Circuit Court judge.{{sfnp|Chernow|2017|p=628}}

===Final three Reconstruction states admitted===
Immediately upon inauguration in 1869, Grant bolstered Reconstruction by prodding Congress to readmit [[Virginia]], [[Mississippi]], and [[Texas]] into the Union, while ensuring their state constitutions protected every citizen's voting rights.<ref name="Spxiii">{{Cite book |last=Simon |first=John Y. |title=Papers of Ulysses S. Grant |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |year=1967 |isbn=9780809319640 |volume=19 |location=Carbondale |pages=xiii}}</ref>

Grant advocated the ratification of the [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifteenth Amendment]] that said states could not disenfranchise [[African Americans]].{{sfnp|Simon|2002}} Within a year, the three remaining states—Mississippi, Virginia, and Texas—adopted the new amendment—and were admitted to Congress.{{sfnmp|Brands|2012|1pp=435, 465|Chernow|2017|2pp=686–687|Simon|2002|3p=247}} Grant put military pressure on Georgia to reinstate its black legislators and adopt the new amendment.{{sfnp|Brands|2012|p=465}} Georgia complied, and on February 24, 1871, its senators were seated in Congress, with all the former Confederate states represented.{{sfnp|Simon|2002|p=246}} Southern Reconstructed states were controlled by Republicans and former slaves. Eight years later, in 1877, the Democratic Party had full control of the region and Reconstruction was dead.{{sfnp|Simon|2002|pp=247–248}}

===Department of Justice created===
In 1870, to enforce Reconstruction, Congress and Grant created the [[United States Justice Department|Justice Department]] that allowed the Attorney General [[Amos Akerman]] and the first [[Solicitor General of the United States|Solicitor General]] [[Benjamin Bristow]] to prosecute the Klan.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|pp=543–545}}{{sfnp|Brands|2012|p=474}} In Grant's two terms he strengthened Washington's legal capabilities to directly intervene to protect citizenship rights even if the states ignored the problem.{{sfnp|Kaczorowski|1995}}

===Enforcement Acts (1870–1871)===
Congress and Grant passed a series (three) of powerful civil rights [[Enforcement Acts]] between 1870 and 1871, designed to protect blacks and Reconstruction governments.{{sfnmp|Kahan|2018|1pp=64–65|Calhoun|2017|2pp=317–319}} These were criminal codes that protected the freedmen's right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and receive equal protection of laws. Most important, they authorized the federal government to intervene when states did not act. Urged by Grant and his Attorney General [[Amos T. Akerman]], the strongest of these laws was the [[Ku Klux Klan Act]], passed on April 20, 1871, that authorized the president to impose [[martial law]] and suspend the writ of ''[[habeas corpus]]''.{{sfnmp|Kahan|2018|1pp=64–65|Calhoun|2017|2pp=317–319}}{{sfnmp|Smith|2001|1pp=545–546|White|2016|2p=521}}{{sfnp|Simon|2002|p=248}}

Grant was so adamant about the passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act, he earlier had sent a message to Congress, on March 23, 1871, in which he said:
{{blockquote|"A condition of affairs now exists in some of the States of the Union rendering life and property insecure, and the carrying of the mails and the collection of the revenue dangerous. The proof that such a, condition of affairs exists in some localities is now before the Senate. That the power to correct these evils is beyond the control of State authorities, I do not doubt. That the power of the Executive of the United States, acting within the limits of existing laws, is sufficient for present emergencies, is not clear."<ref name=":00">{{cite book |url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa&cc=moa&sid=95e3f6e828e116b80d4cccd93c806bc1&view=text&rgn=main&idno=ACA4911.0001.001 |title=Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States February 19, 1872 |date=January 31, 1872 |access-date=2021-01-13 |archive-date=June 4, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210604011404/https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa&cc=moa&sid=95e3f6e828e116b80d4cccd93c806bc1&view=text&rgn=main&idno=ACA4911.0001.001 |url-status=live }}</ref>}}

Grant also recommended the enforcement of laws in all parts of the United States to protect life, liberty, and property.<ref name=":00"/>

===Prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan===
[[File:Amos T Akerman - crop and minor retouch.jpg|upright|thumb|right|Grant's Attorney General [[Amos T. Akerman]] prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan, believing that the strong arm of the federal Justice Department could pacify the South.]]
[[File:Thomas Nast 1874.jpg|thumb|right|[[Thomas Nast]] illustration entitled "Halt," published October 17, 1874]]
Grant's Justice Department destroyed the Ku Klux Klan, but during both of his terms, Blacks lost their political strength in the [[Southern United States]]. By October, Grant suspended ''habeas corpus'' in part of South Carolina and he also sent federal troops to help marshals, who initiated prosecutions of Klan members.{{sfnp|Simon|2002|p=248}} Grant's Attorney General, [[Amos T. Akerman]], who replaced Hoar, was zealous in his attempt to destroy the Klan.{{sfnp|Kahan|2018|p=66}} Akerman and South Carolina's U.S. marshal arrested over 470 Klan members, but hundreds of Klansmen, including the Klan's wealthy leaders, fled the state.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|p=547}}{{sfnp|Calhoun|2017|p=324}} Akerman returned over 3,000 indictments of the Klan throughout the South and obtained 600 convictions for the worst offenders.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|p=547}} By 1872, Grant had crushed the Klan, and African Americans peacefully voted in record numbers in elections in the South.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|pp=547–548}}{{sfnp|Foner|2019|pp=120–122}} Attorney General [[George Henry Williams|George H. Williams]], Akerman's replacement, suspended his prosecutions of the Klan in North Carolina and South Carolina in the Spring of 1873, but prior to the election of 1874, he changed course and prosecuted the Klan.{{sfnp|Kahan|2018|p=122}} Civil rights prosecutions continued but with fewer yearly cases and convictions.{{sfnmp|Wang|1997|1p=102|Kaczorowski|1995|2p=182}}

===Amnesty Act of 1872===
In addition to fighting for African American civil rights, Grant wanted to reconcile with white southerners, out of a spirit of Appomattox.{{sfnp|Chernow|2017|page=746}} To placate the South, in May 1872, Grant signed the [[Amnesty Act]], which restored political rights to former Confederates, except for a few hundred former Confederate officers.{{sfnmp|Kahan|2018|1pp=67–68|Chernow|2017|2pp=746}} Grant wanted people to vote and practice free speech despite their "views, color or nativity."{{sfnp|Chernow|2017|page=746}}

===Civil Rights Act of 1875===
The [[Civil Rights Act of 1875]] was one of the last major acts of Congress and Grant to preserve Reconstruction and equality for [[African American]]s.{{sfnp|Chernow|2017|p=795}}{{sfnp|Calhoun|2017|p=479}} The initial bill was created by Senator [[Charles Sumner]]. Grant endorsed the measure, despite his previous feud with Sumner, signing it into law on March 1, 1875. The law, ahead of its times, outlawed discrimination for blacks in [[public accommodations]], schools, transportation, and selecting juries. Although weakly enforceable, the law spread fear among whites opposed to interracial justice and was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1883. The later enforceable [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] borrowed many of the earlier 1875's law's provisions.{{sfnp|Chernow|2017|p=795}}

===Countered election fraud===
To counter vote fraud in the Democratic stronghold of [[New York City]], Grant sent in tens of thousands of armed, uniformed federal marshals and other election officials to regulate the 1870 and subsequent elections. Democrats across the North then mobilized to defend their base and attacked Grant's entire set of policies.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Quigley |first=David |date=January 2008 |title=Constitutional Revision and the City: The Enforcement Acts and Urban America, 1870–1894 |journal=[[Journal of Policy History]] |volume=20 |issue=1 |pages=64–75 |doi=10.1353/jph.0.0001|s2cid=153347617 }}</ref> On October 21, 1876, President Grant deployed troops to protect Black and White Republican voters in Petersburg, Virginia.{{sfnp|Blair|2005|p=400}}

===National support of Reconstruction declines===
Grant's support from Congress and the nation declined due to scandals within his administration and the political resurgence of the Democrats in the North and South. Anti-Reconstruction whites claimed that wealthy white landowners had lost power, and they blamed governmental scandals in the South on it. Meanwhile, white northern Republicans were becoming more conservative. Republicans and Black Americans lost power in the South. By 1870, most Republicans felt the war goals had been achieved, and they turned their attention to other issues such as economic policies.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|p=547}} White Americans were in almost full control again by the start of the 1900s and did not enforce Black voting rights. The United States government eventually pulled all its troops from the Southern states.

==African American officeholders==
[[File:Radical members of the first legislature after the war, South Carolina LCCN97504690.jpg|alt=Radical members of the first legislature after the war, South Carolina|thumb|"Radical members of the first legislature after the war, South Carolina"]]
Republicans took control of all Southern state governorships and state legislatures, except for Virginia.<ref group="lower-roman">Georgia had a Republican governor and legislature, but the Republican hegemony was tenuous at best, and Democrats continued to win presidential elections there. See {{Cite web |last1=Jackson |first1=Ed |last2=Pou |first2=Charles |title=This Day in Georgia History: March 28 |url=http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/tdgh-mar/mar28.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090109203144/http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/tdgh-mar/mar28.htm |archive-date=January 9, 2009 |website=Today in Georgia History}}; ''cf.'' [[Rufus Bullock]].</ref> The Republican coalition elected [[African American officeholders from the end of the Civil War until before 1900|numerous African Americans]] to local, state, and national offices; though they did not dominate any electoral offices, Black men as representatives voting in state and federal legislatures marked a drastic social change. At the beginning of 1867, no African American in the South held political office, but within three or four years "about 15 percent of the officeholders in the South were Black—a larger proportion than in 1990". Most of those offices were at the local level.{{sfnp|McPherson|1992|p=19}} In 1860, Blacks constituted the majority of the population in Mississippi and South Carolina, 47% in Louisiana, 45% in Alabama, and 44% in Georgia and Florida,<ref>{{cite web |last=Willis |first=John C. |title=America's Civil War: Date of Secession Compared to 1860 Black Population |url=http://www.sewanee.edu/faculty/willis/Civil_War/tables/dateSecession.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140816055749/http://www.sewanee.edu/faculty/willis/Civil_War/tables/dateSecession.html |archive-date=August 16, 2014 |access-date=April 9, 2014 |work=[[Sewanee: The University of the South]]}}</ref> so their political influence was still far less than their percentage of the population.

About 137 Black officeholders had lived outside the South before the Civil War. Some who had escaped from slavery to the North and had become educated returned to help the South advance in the postwar era. Others were [[free people of color]] before the war, who had achieved education and positions of leadership elsewhere. Other African American men elected to office were already leaders in their communities, including a number of preachers. As happened in White communities, not all leadership depended upon wealth and literacy.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|loc=ch. 7}}{{sfnp|Foner|1993|loc=introduction}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hahn |first=Steven |title=A Nation under Our Feet |publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |year=2005 |isbn=9780674017658 |location=Cambridge, Mass.}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}}
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="margin:1em auto 1em auto"
|-
|+Race of delegates to 1867<br />state constitutional conventions{{sfnp|Rhodes|1920|loc=v. 6: p. 199}}
|-
! State !! White !! Black !! % White !! Statewide White<br />population<br />(% in 1870)<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1870a-03.pdf |title=Table I. Population of the United States (by States and Territories) in the Aggregate and as White, Colored, Free Colored, Slave, Chinese, and Indian, at Each Census |work=Population by States and Territories – 1790–1870 |date=1872 |publisher=[[United States Census Bureau]] |access-date=October 20, 2007 |archive-date=July 21, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721040939/http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1870a-03.pdf |url-status=live }} The complete 1870 census documents are [https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1872/dec/1870a.html available from Census.gov] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201019155659/https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1872/dec/1870a.html |date=October 19, 2020 }}.</ref>
|-
! scope="row" | Virginia
| style="text-align:right;"|80 || style="text-align:right;"|25 || style="text-align:right;"|76|| style="text-align:right;"|58
|-
! scope="row" | North Carolina
| style="text-align:right;"|107 || style="text-align:right;"|13 || style="text-align:right;"|89|| style="text-align:right;"|63
|-
! scope="row" | South Carolina
| style="text-align:right;"|48 || style="text-align:right;"|76 || style="text-align:right;"|39|| style="text-align:right;"|41
|-
! scope="row" | Georgia
| style="text-align:right;"|133 || style="text-align:right;"|33 || style="text-align:right;"|80|| style="text-align:right;"|54
|-
! scope="row" | Florida
| style="text-align:right;"|28 || style="text-align:right;"|18 || style="text-align:right;"|61|| style="text-align:right;"|51
|-
! scope="row" | Alabama
| style="text-align:right;"|92 || style="text-align:right;"|16 || style="text-align:right;"|85|| style="text-align:right;"|52
|-
! scope="row" | Mississippi
| style="text-align:right;"|68 || style="text-align:right;"|17 || style="text-align:right;"|80|| style="text-align:right;"|46
|-
! scope="row" | Louisiana
| style="text-align:right;"|25 || style="text-align:right;"|44 || style="text-align:right;"|36|| style="text-align:right;"|50
|-
! scope="row" | Texas
| style="text-align:right;"|81 || style="text-align:right;"|9 || style="text-align:right;"|90|| style="text-align:right;"|69
|}

There were few African Americans elected or appointed to national office. African Americans voted for both White and Black candidates. The [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] guaranteed only that voting could not be restricted on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. From 1868 on, campaigns and elections were surrounded by violence as White insurgents and paramilitaries tried to suppress the Black vote, and fraud was rampant. Many white southerners who had been pro-slavery were angry with governments that had African Americans in office. Furious white Southerners told the rumor that Reconstruction was secretly promoting Black Americans having full control over whites. Many congressional elections in the South were contested. Even states with majority-African-American populations often elected only one or two African American representatives to Congress. Exceptions included South Carolina; at the end of Reconstruction, four of its five congressmen were African Americans.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/01/the-many-black-americans-who-held-public-office-during-reconstruction-in-southern-states-like-south-carolina.html |title=South Carolina's Forgotten Black Political Revolution |last=Foner |first=Eric |author-link=Eric Foner |date=January 31, 2018 |work=[[Slate (website)|Slate]] |access-date=February 3, 2020 |archive-date=November 4, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201104205629/https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/01/the-many-black-americans-who-held-public-office-during-reconstruction-in-southern-states-like-south-carolina.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="margin:1em auto 1em auto"
|-
|+African Americans in Office 1870–1876{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=354–355}}
|-
! State !! State<br />Legislators !! [[African Americans in the United States Congress#In Reconstruction era|U.S.<br />Senators]] !! [[African Americans in the United States Congress#In Reconstruction era 2|U.S.<br />Congressmen]]
|-
! scope="row" | Alabama
| style="text-align:right;"|69|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|4
|-
! scope="row" | Arkansas
| style="text-align:right;"|8|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|0
|-
! scope="row" | Florida
| style="text-align:right;"|30|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|1
|-
! scope="row" | Georgia
| style="text-align:right;"|41|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|1
|-
! scope="row" | Louisiana
| style="text-align:right;"|87|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|[[John Willis Menard|1*]]
|-
! scope="row" | Mississippi
| style="text-align:right;"|112|| style="text-align:right;"|2 || style="text-align:right;"|1
|-
! scope="row" | North Carolina
| style="text-align:right;"|30|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|1
|-
! scope="row" | South Carolina
| style="text-align:right;"|190|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|6
|-
! scope="row" | Tennessee
| style="text-align:right;"|1|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|0
|-
! scope="row" | Texas
| style="text-align:right;"|19|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|0
|-
! scope="row" | Virginia
| style="text-align:right;"|46|| style="text-align:right;"|0|| style="text-align:right;"|0
|- style="background:#b0c4de;"
| '''Total''' || style="text-align:right;"|'''633'''|| style="text-align:right;"|'''2'''|| style="text-align:right;"|'''15'''
|-
|}

==Social and economic factors==

===Religion===
[[File:Eastman Johnson, The Lord is My Shepherd.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Eastman Johnson]]'s 1863 painting ''[[The Lord Is My Shepherd (Eastman Johnson)|The Lord is My Shepherd]]'', of a man reading the Bible]]
Freedmen were very active in forming their own churches, mostly Baptist or Methodist, and giving their ministers both moral and political leadership roles. In a process of self-segregation, practically all Blacks left White churches so that few racially integrated congregations remained (apart from some Catholic churches in Louisiana). They started many new Black Baptist churches and soon, new Black state associations.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Four main groups competed with each other across the South to form new Methodist churches composed of freedmen. They were the [[African Methodist Episcopal Church]]; the [[African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church]], both independent Black denominations founded in Philadelphia and New York, respectively; the [[Christian Methodist Episcopal Church|Colored Methodist Episcopal Church]] (which was sponsored by the White [[Methodist Episcopal Church, South]]) and the well-funded [[Methodist Episcopal Church]] (predominantly White Methodists of the North). The [[History of Methodism in the United States#Civil War and Reconstruction|Methodist Church]] had split before the war due to disagreements about slavery.{{sfnp|Stowell|1998|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=jQphbo640wAC&pg=PA84 83–84]}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Walker |first=Clarence Earl |title=A Rock in a Weary Land: The African Methodist Episcopal Church During the Civil War and Reconstruction |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=1982 |isbn=9780807108833 |location=Baton Rouge}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}} By 1871, the Northern Methodists had 88,000 Black members in the South, and had opened numerous schools for them.{{sfnp|Sweet|1914|p=157}}

Blacks in the South made up a core element of the Republican Party. Their ministers had powerful political roles that were distinctive since they did not depend on White support, in contrast to teachers, politicians, businessmen, and tenant farmers.<ref>{{cite book |last=Grant |first=Donald Lee |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zpmjRm4cdswC&pg=PA264 |title=The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=1993 |isbn=978-0-8203-2329-9 |page=264}}</ref> Acting on the principle as stated by [[Charles H. Pearce]], an AME minister in Florida: "A man in this state cannot do his whole duty as a minister except he looks out for the political interests of his people." More than 100 Black ministers were elected to state legislatures during Reconstruction, as well as several to Congress and one, [[Hiram Rhodes Revels]], to the U.S. Senate.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=93}}

In a highly controversial action during the war, the [[Methodist Episcopal Church|Northern Methodists]] used the Army to seize control of Methodist churches in large cities, over the vehement protests of the [[Methodist Episcopal Church, South|Southern Methodists]]. Historian Ralph Morrow reports:{{sfnp|Morrow|1954|p=202}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Morrow |first=Ralph Ernest |title=Northern Methodism and Reconstruction |publisher=Michigan State University Press |year=1956 |location=East Lansing |oclc=301551}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}}{{sfnp|Stowell|1998|pp=30–31}}
{{blockquote|1=A War Department order of November 1863, applicable to the Southwestern states of the Confederacy, authorized the Northern Methodists to occupy "all houses of worship belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Church South in which a loyal minister, appointed by a loyal bishop of said church, does not officiate."}}

Across the North, several denominations—especially the Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians, as well as the Quakers—strongly supported Radical policies. The focus on social problems paved the way for the [[Social Gospel]] movement. [[Matthew Simpson]], a Methodist bishop, played a leading role in mobilizing the Northern Methodists for the cause. Biographer Robert D. Clark called him the "High Priest of the Radical Republicans".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Clark |first=Robert D. |title=The Life of Matthew Simpson |publisher=Macmillan |year=1956 |location=New York |pages=245–267 |oclc=852504}}</ref> The Methodist Ministers Association of Boston, meeting two weeks after Lincoln's assassination, called for a hard line against the Confederate leadership:<ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/sourcebookofamer00norw |title=Sourcebook of American Methodism |date=1982 |publisher=Abingdon |isbn=9780687391400 |editor-last=Norwood |editor-first=Fredrick A. |location=Nashville |page=323 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref>{{sfnp|Sweet|1914|p=161}}
{{blockquote|1=Resolved, that no terms should be made with traitors, no compromise with rebels.... That we hold the national authority bound by the most solemn obligation to God and man to bring all the civil and military leaders of the rebellion to trial by due course of law, and when they are clearly convicted, to execute them.}}

The denominations all sent missionaries, teachers and activists to the South to help the freedmen. Only the Methodists made many converts, however.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Howard |first=Victor B. |url=https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1139&context=upk_united_states_history |title=Religion and the Radical Republican Movement, 1860–1870 |date=1990 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=9780813117027 |location=Lexington |pages=212–213 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200709085935/https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1139&context=upk_united_states_history |archive-date=July 9, 2020 |url-status=dead |via=University of Kentucky |access-date=February 1, 2024 }}</ref> Activists sponsored by the Northern Methodist Church played a major role in the Freedmen's Bureau, notably in such key educational roles as the bureau's state superintendent or assistant superintendent of education for Virginia, Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina.{{sfnp|Morrow|1954|p=205}}

Many Americans interpreted great events in religious terms. Historian Wilson Fallin Jr. contrasts the interpretation of the Civil War and Reconstruction in White versus Black Baptist sermons in Alabama. White Baptists expressed the view that:<ref name="Fallin" />
{{blockquote|1=God had chastised them and given them a special mission—to maintain orthodoxy, strict biblicism, personal piety, and traditional race relations. Slavery, they insisted, had not been sinful. Rather, emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction was a clear sign of God's favor.}}

In sharp contrast, Black Baptists interpreted the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction as:<ref name="Fallin">{{cite book |last=Fallin |first=Wilson Jr. |url=https://archive.org/details/upliftingpeoplet0000fall/page/n19/mode/2up |title=Uplifting the People: Three Centuries of Black Baptists in Alabama |date=2007 |publisher=University of Alabama Press |isbn=9780817380304 |series=Religion and American culture |location=Tuscaloosa |pages=52–53 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=God's gift of freedom. They appreciated opportunities to exercise their independence, to worship in their own way, to affirm their worth and dignity, and to proclaim the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Most of all, they could form their own churches, associations, and conventions. These institutions offered self-help and racial uplift, and provided places where the gospel of liberation could be proclaimed. As a result, black preachers continued to insist that God would protect and help them; God would be their rock in a stormy land.}}

===Public schools===
Historian James D. Anderson argues that the freed slaves were the first Southerners "to campaign for universal, state-supported public education".{{sfnp|Anderson|1988|p=[https://archive.org/details/educationblackss00ande_055/page/n20 4]}} Blacks in the Republican coalition played a critical role in establishing the principle in state constitutions for the first time during congressional Reconstruction. Some slaves had learned to read from White playmates or colleagues before formal education was allowed by law; African Americans started "native schools" before the end of the war; Sabbath schools were another widespread means that freedmen developed to teach literacy.{{sfnp|Anderson|1988|pp=6–15}} When they gained suffrage, Black politicians took this commitment to public education to state constitutional conventions.

The Republicans created a system of public schools, which were segregated by race everywhere except New Orleans. Generally, elementary and a few secondary schools were built in most cities, and occasionally in the countryside, but the South had few cities.<ref name="Tyack Lowe"/><ref>{{Cite book |last=Vaughn |first=William Preston |title=Schools for All: The Blacks and Public Education in the South, 1865–1877 |date=2015 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=9780813155326}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}}

The rural areas faced many difficulties opening and maintaining public schools. In the country, the public school was often a one-room affair that attracted about half the younger children. The teachers were poorly paid, and their pay was often in arrears.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=365–368}} Conservatives contended the rural schools were too expensive and unnecessary for a region where the vast majority of people were cotton or tobacco farmers. They had no expectation of better education for their residents. One historian found that the schools were less effective than they might have been because "poverty, the inability of the states to collect taxes, and inefficiency and corruption in many places prevented successful operation of the schools".{{sfnp|Franklin|1961|p=139}} After Reconstruction ended and White elected officials [[Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|disenfranchised Blacks]] and imposed [[Jim Crow]] laws, they consistently underfunded Black institutions, including the schools.

After the war, Northern missionaries founded numerous private academies and colleges for freedmen across the South. In addition, every state founded state colleges for freedmen, such as [[Alcorn State University]] in Mississippi. The normal schools and state colleges produced generations of teachers who were integral to the education of African American children under the segregated system. By the end of the century, the majority of African Americans were literate.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

In the late 19th century, the federal government established land grant legislation to provide funding for higher education across the United States. Learning that Blacks were excluded from land grant colleges in the South, in 1890 the federal government insisted that Southern states establish Black state institutions as [[land grant colleges]] to provide for Black higher education, in order to continue to receive funds for their already established White schools. Some states classified their Black state colleges as land grant institutions. Former Congressman [[John Roy Lynch]] wrote: "there are very many liberal, fair-minded and influential Democrats in the state [Mississippi] who are strongly in favor of having the state provide for the liberal education of both races".{{sfnp|Lynch|1913|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mayberry |first=B. D. |title=A Century of Agriculture in the 1890 Land Grant Institutions and Tuskegee University, 1890–1990 |date=1992 |publisher=Vantage Press |isbn=9780533095100 |location=New York}}</ref>

According to a 2020 study by economist [[Trevon Logan]], increases in Black politicians led to greater tax revenue, which was put towards public education spending (and land tenancy reforms). Logan finds that this led to greater literacy among Black men.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Logan |first=Trevon D. |date=2020 |title=Do Black Politicians Matter? Evidence from Reconstruction |journal=The Journal of Economic History |volume=80 |issue=1 |pages=1–37 |doi=10.1017/S0022050719000755 |issn=0022-0507 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

===Railroad subsidies and payoffs===
[[File:Atlanta roundhouse ruin3.jpg|thumb|Atlanta's [[rail yard]] and [[Railway roundhouse|roundhouse]] in ruins shortly after the end of the Civil War]]

Every Southern state subsidized railroads, which modernizers believed could haul the South out of isolation and poverty. Millions of dollars in bonds and subsidies were fraudulently pocketed. One ring in North Carolina spent $200,000 in bribing the legislature and obtained millions of state dollars for its railroads. Instead of building new track, however, it used the funds to speculate in bonds, reward friends with extravagant fees, and enjoy lavish trips to Europe.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=387}} Taxes were quadrupled across the South to pay off the railroad bonds and the school costs.

There were complaints among taxpayers because taxes had historically been low, as the planter elite was not committed to public infrastructure or public education. Taxes historically had been much lower in the South than in the North, reflecting the lack of government investment by the communities.{{sfnp|Franklin|1961|pp=141–148}}{{sfnp|Summers|2014a|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}} Nevertheless, thousands of miles of lines were built as the Southern system expanded from {{convert|11000|mi|km}} in 1870 to {{convert|29000|mi|km}} in 1890. The lines were owned and directed overwhelmingly by Northerners. Railroads helped create a mechanically skilled group of craftsmen and broke the isolation of much of the region. Passengers were few, however, and apart from hauling the cotton crop when it was harvested, there was little freight traffic.{{sfnp|Stover|1955|p=}} As Franklin explains: "numerous railroads fed at the public trough by bribing legislators&nbsp;... and through the use and misuse of state funds". According to one businessman, the effect "was to drive capital from the state, paralyze industry, and demoralize labor".{{sfnp|Franklin|1961|pp=147–148}}

===The Southern country store===
{{Further|Rural American history#Southern country store}}

Outside the South, there were plenty of small towns where merchants and storekeepers could prosper. In the antebellum South there was no counterpart. The Civil War had devastated the rural South, as cotton prices fell and the vast sums invested in slaves disappeared overnight.<ref>David B. Danbom, ''Born in the Country: A History of Rural America'' (2017) pp. 99–120.</ref> Before the Civil War plantation owners handled the cotton or tobacco matters and met consumer needs of their family and slaves. The dealt directly with wholesalers (called "factors") in far-off cities such as Baltimore, Louisville, and St Louis. In poor white areas there were occasional merchants before 1865. When slavery was abolished the rural South urgently needed merchants. Ambitious men suddenly appeared after 1865 and played a leading role in refashioning the economic and social fabric of the South. These merchants served as crucial intermediaries between rural communities and larger markets. Many if not most were Jewish peddlers and merchants; some had been in the South for decades and others were newly arrived from the North. They had a good rapport with their Black customers.<ref>John Dollard, ''Caste and Class in a Southern Town'' (1949) pp. 4, 128-130.</ref><ref>Hasia R. Diner,  ''A time for gathering : the second migration, 1820-1880'' (1992) pp.60-85. [https://archive.org/details/timeforgathering0000dine online]</ref><ref>Diane C. Vecchio,  "Making their way in the New South: Jewish peddlers and merchants in the South Carolina Up-Country." ''South Carolina Historical Magazine'' 113#2, (2012), pp. 100–24. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/41698099 online]</ref>

Merchants used the newly built railroads to link the rural cotton or tobacco economy to the national economy. They worked with wholesalers in the handful of Southern cities to bring in northern consumer products. Legally they depended on new state laws creating the "[[crop lien system]]". The merchant legally owned the entire commercial crop (usually cotton) from planting to harvest. He sold supplies on credit. When the crop was harvested the farmer brought it all to the merchant who then sold it, paid what the farmer owed the owner of the land, cleared the farmer's debt to the store, and returned the surplus if any. By providing credit to the poor white and black farmers, they exerted more influence every week than the white land owners.<ref>Thomas D. Clark, "The Furnishing and Supply System in Southern Agriculture since 1865," ''Journal of Southern History'' 12#1 (1946), pp. 24-44 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2197729 online]</ref>

The role of the country store extended beyond simple trade. It was a [[general store]] that provided a wide range of goods—pills, petticoats and plows and a hundred other items. The local federal post office was inside and there were benches outside for the bystanders. The farmers produced most of their own food, but they did buy necessities. In one Florida store with a largely Black clientele, the items most often purchased were corn, salt pork, sugar, lard, coffee, syrup, rice, flour, cloth, shoes, shotguns, shells, and patent medicines.   Everything had a price except the one item in greatest demand: gossip was free.<ref>Clifton L. Paisley,  "Van Brunt's Store, Iamonia, Florida, 1902-1911." ''Florida Historical Quarterly'' 48.4 (1969): 3+ [https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3160&context=fhq online]</ref>

Merchants took food and meat in trade and resold it. These merchants were not just shopkeepers but also acted as bankers and brokers, extending credit to poor farmers and hand pressed landowners. The customers needed supplies every week, but had an income only at the end of the harvest season. The merchants gave them credit in terms of the expected size of their cotton or tobacco crops. Sharecroppers had to give half or more of the crop to the landowner. The rest at harvest time went to the merchant who would sell advantageously, and close the credit accounts. Merchants were thus the liaison between rural areas and the few cities in the postwar South. They handled the flow of goods, information, and credit. Merchants depended on credit from urban wholesalers, and like the sharecroppers they paid off their own debts with proceeds from the cotton or tobacco harvests.<ref>The best source is Thomas C. Clark, ''Pills Petticoats and Plows: The Southern Country Store'' (1944) [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.156316/page/n1/mode/1up online]</ref><ref>Jacqueline P. Bull, "The General Merchant in the Economic History of the New South." ''Journal of Southern History'' 18.1 (1952): 37-59. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2954791 in JSTOR]</ref><ref>Lacy K.  Ford, "Rednecks and Merchants: Economic Development and Social Tensions in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1865-1900." ''Journal of American History''  71#2 (1984), pp. 294–318. [https://doi.org/10.2307/1901757 online]</ref>

In the paternalistic mill villages that opened in the South in the late 19th century, the textile mills provided jobs for all family members, rented them cheap housing and paid then −in script they used to buy food and supplies in company stores. Independent merchants were few.<ref>Holland Thompson, "Life in a Southern Mill Town." ''Political Science Quarterly'' 15.1 (1900): 1-13. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2140703.pdf online]</ref><ref>Dale Newman, "Work and community life in a southern textile town." ''Labor History'' 19.2 (1978): 204-225. https://doi.org/10.1080/00236567808584489</ref>

===Taxation during Reconstruction===
Reconstruction changed the means of taxation in the South. In the U.S. from the earliest days until today, a major source of state revenue was the [[property tax]]. In the South, wealthy landowners were allowed to self-assess the value of their own land. These fraudulent assessments were almost valueless, and pre-war property tax collections were lacking due to property value misrepresentation. State revenues came from fees and from sales taxes on slave auctions.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=375}} Some states assessed property owners by a combination of [[Land value tax|land value]] and a capitation tax, a tax on each worker employed. This tax was often assessed in a way to discourage a free labor market, where a slave was assessed at 75 cents, while a free White was assessed at a dollar or more, and a free African American at $3 or more. Some revenue also came from [[Poll tax (United States)|poll taxes]]. These taxes were more than poor people could pay, with the designed and inevitable consequence that they did not vote.

During Reconstruction, the state legislature mobilized to provide for public needs more than had previous governments: establishing public schools and investing in infrastructure, as well as charitable institutions such as hospitals and asylums. They set out to increase taxes, which were unusually low. The planters had provided privately for their own needs. There was some fraudulent spending in the postwar years; a collapse in state credit because of huge deficits, forced the states to increase property tax rates. In places, the rate went up to 10 times higher—despite the poverty of the region. The planters had not invested in infrastructure and much had been destroyed during the war. In part, the new tax system was designed to force owners of large plantations with huge tracts of uncultivated land either to sell or to have it confiscated for failure to pay taxes.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=376}} The taxes would serve as a market-based system for redistributing the land to the landless freedmen and White poor. Mississippi, for instance, was mostly frontier, with 90% of the bottom lands in the interior undeveloped.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

The following table shows property tax rates for South Carolina and Mississippi. Many local town and county assessments effectively doubled the tax rates reported in the table. These taxes were still levied upon the landowners' own sworn testimony as to the value of their land, which remained the dubious and exploitable system used by wealthy landholders in the South well into the 20th century.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="margin:1em auto 1em auto"
|+ State Property Tax Rates during Reconstruction
! Year !! South Carolina !! Mississippi
|-
| 1869 || style="text-align:right;"|5 mills (0.5%)|| style="text-align:right;"|1 mill (0.1%) (lowest rate between 1822 and 1898)
|-
| 1870 || style="text-align:right;"|9 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|5 mills
|-
| 1871 || style="text-align:right;"|7 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|4 mills
|-
| 1872 || style="text-align:right;"|12 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|8.5 mills
|-
| 1873 || style="text-align:right;"|12 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|12.5 mills
|-
| 1874 || style="text-align:right;"|10.3–8 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|14 mills (1.4%) "a rate which virtually amounted to confiscation" (highest rate between 1822 and 1898)
|-
| 1875 || style="text-align:right;"|11 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|
|-
| 1876 || style="text-align:right;"|7 mills || style="text-align:right;"|
|-
| Sources || style="text-align:center;"|{{cite book|ref=none |url=https://archive.org/details/reconstructioni00reyngoog/page/n538 <!-- pg=2 --> |last=Reynolds |first=J. S. |title=Reconstruction in South Carolina, 1865–1877 |place=Columbia, SC |publisher=The State Co. |year=1905 |page=329}}|| style="text-align:center;"|{{cite book|ref=none |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Idw0AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA13 |last=Hollander |first=J. H. |title=Studies in State Taxation with Particular Reference to the Southern States |place=Baltimore |publisher=Johns Hopkins Press |year=1900 |page=192}}
|}

Called upon to pay taxes on their property, essentially for the first time, angry plantation owners revolted. The conservatives shifted their focus away from race to taxes.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=415–416}} Former Congressman [[John R. Lynch]], a Black Republican leader from Mississippi, later wrote:{{sfnp|Lynch|1913|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}
{{blockquote|1=The argument made by the taxpayers, however, was plausible and it may be conceded that, upon the whole, they were about right; for no doubt it would have been much easier upon the taxpayers to have increased at that time the interest-bearing debt of the state than to have increased the tax rate. The latter course, however, had been adopted and could not then be changed unless of course they wanted to change them.}}

===National financial issues===
[[File:Friedberg - 639.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|$20 banknote with portrait of Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch]]
The Civil War had been financed primarily by issuing short-term and long-term bonds and loans, plus inflation caused by printing paper money, plus new taxes. Wholesale prices had more than doubled, and reduction of inflation was a priority for Secretary McCulloch.<ref name="Schell 1930">{{cite journal |first=Herbert S. |last=Schell |title=Hugh McCulloch and the Treasury Department, 1865–1869 |journal=Mississippi Valley Historical Review |volume=17 |issue=3 |date=1930 |pages=404–421 |doi=10.2307/1893078 |jstor=1893078}}</ref> A high priority, and by far the most controversial, was the currency question. The old paper currency issued by state banks had been withdrawn, and Confederate currency was worthless. The national banks had issued $207&nbsp;million in currency, which was backed by gold and silver. The federal treasury had issued $428&nbsp;million in [[Greenback (1860s money)|greenbacks]], which was legal tender but not backed by gold or silver. In addition about $275&nbsp;million of coin was in circulation. The new administration policy announced in October 1865 would be to make all the paper convertible into specie, if Congress so voted. The House of Representatives passed the Alley Resolution on December 18, 1865, by a vote of 144 to 6. In the Senate it was a different matter, for the key player was Senator [[John Sherman]], who said that inflation contraction was not nearly as important as refunding the short-term and long-term national debt. The war had been largely financed by national debt, in addition to taxation and inflation. The national debt stood at $2.8&nbsp;billion. By October 1865, most of it in short-term and temporary loans.<ref>For an econometric approach, see: {{cite book |last=Ohanian |first=Lee E. |title=The Macroeconomic Effects of War Finance in the United States: Taxes, Inflation, and Deficit Finance |date=2018 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9780815349662 |location=London}}</ref> Wall Street bankers typified by [[Jay Cooke]] believed that the economy was about to grow rapidly, thanks to the development of agriculture through the [[Homestead Act]], the expansion of railroads, especially rebuilding the devastated Southern railroads and opening the [[First transcontinental railroad|transcontinental railroad line]] to the West Coast, and especially the flourishing of manufacturing during the war. The gold premium over greenbacks was $145 in greenbacks to $100 in gold, and the optimists thought that the heavy demand for currency in an era of prosperity would return the ratio to 100.<ref name="Schell 1930"/> A compromise was reached in April 1866, that limited the treasury to a currency contraction of only $10&nbsp;million over six months. Meanwhile, the Senate refunded the entire national debt, but the House failed to act. By early 1867, postwar prosperity was a reality, and the optimists wanted an end to contraction, which Congress ordered in January 1868. Meanwhile, the Treasury issued new bonds at a lower interest rate to refinance the redemption of short-term debt. While the old state bank notes were disappearing from circulation, new national bank notes, backed by species, were expanding. By 1868 inflation was minimal.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Myers |first=Margaret G. |url=https://archive.org/details/financialhistory00myerrich |title=A financial history of the United States |date=1970 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=9780231024426 |location=New York |pages=174–196 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Studenski |first1=Paul |url=https://archive.org/details/financialhistory0000paul |title=Financial History of the United States |last2=Kroos |first2=Herman E. |date=1963 |publisher=McGraw-Hill |edition=2nd |location=New York |oclc=492589832 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Unger |first=Irwin |url=https://archive.org/details/greenbackerasoci0000unge |title=The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance 1865–1879 |date=1964 |publisher=Princeton University Press |oclc=859833035 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Sharkey |first=Robert P. |url=https://archive.org/details/moneyclasspartye0000robe |title=Money, Class, and Party: An Economic Study of Civil War and Reconstruction |date=1967 |publisher=Johns Hopkins Press |location=Baltimore |oclc=1458620 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref>

=== Culture ===
[[Baseball]] rose to prominence during the Civil War, as it gave soldiers from around the country a common pastime. In the aftermath of the war, Northerners who were anxious to reconcile the nation sought to use the unifying powers of the sport mainly among white Americans, resulting in the [[Baseball color line|development of racial segregation]] in the sport.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Swanson |first=Ryan |date=2014-01-01 |title=When Baseball Went White |url=https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples/270/?utm_source=digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples/270&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages |journal=University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters}}</ref>

==Ending Reconstruction==
===Congressional investigation into Reconstruction states 1872===
On April 20, 1871, prior to the passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act (''Last of three Enforcement Acts''), on the same day, the U.S. Congress launched a 21-member investigation committee on the status of the Southern Reconstruction states North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Congressional members on the committee included Rep. [[Benjamin Butler (politician)|Benjamin Butler]], Sen. [[Zachariah Chandler]], and Sen. [[Francis P. Blair]]. Subcommittee members traveled into the South to interview the people living in their respective states. Those interviewed included top-ranking officials, such as [[Wade Hampton III]], former South Carolina Gov. [[James L. Orr]], and [[Nathan Bedford Forrest]], a former Confederate general and prominent [[Ku Klux Klan]] leader (Forrest denied in his congressional testimony being a member). Other Southerners interviewed included farmers, doctors, merchants, teachers, and clergymen. The committee heard numerous reports of White violence against Blacks, while many Whites denied Klan membership or knowledge of violent activities. The majority report by Republicans concluded that the government would not tolerate any Southern "conspiracy" to resist violently the congressional Reconstruction. The committee completed its 13-volume report in February 1872. While President [[Ulysses S. Grant]] had been able to suppress the KKK through the Enforcement Acts, other [[paramilitary]] [[insurgents]] organized, including the [[White League]] in 1874, active in Louisiana; and the [[Red Shirts (Southern United States)|Red Shirts]], with chapters active in Mississippi and the Carolinas. They used intimidation and outright attacks to run Republicans out of office and repress voting by Blacks, leading to White Democrats regaining power by the elections of the mid-to-late 1870s.{{sfnp|Franklin|1961|pp=168–173}}

===Southern Democrats===
[[File:A Visit from the Old Mistress.jpg|thumb|[[Winslow Homer]]'s 1876 painting ''A Visit from the Old Mistress'']]
While Republican whites supported measures for black civil rights, other whites typically opposed these measures. Some supported armed attacks to suppress blacks. They self-consciously defended their own actions within the framework of a white American discourse of resistance against [[tyrannical]] government, and they broadly succeeded in convincing many fellow White citizens, says Steedman.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Steedman |first=Marek D. |date=Spring 2009 |title=Resistance, Rebirth, and Redemption: The Rhetoric of White Supremacy in Post-Civil War Louisiana |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250202064 |journal=Historical Reflections |volume=35 |issue=1 |pages=97–113 |doi=10.3167/hrrh2009.350106}}</ref>

The opponents of Reconstruction formed state political parties, affiliated with the national Democratic Party and often named the "Conservative Party." They supported or tolerated violent [[paramilitary]] groups, such as the White League in Louisiana and the Red Shirts in Mississippi and the Carolinas, that assassinated and intimidated both Black and White Republican leaders at election time. Historian George C. Rable called such groups the "military arm of the Democratic Party". By the mid-1870s, the "conservatives" and Democrats had aligned with the national Democratic Party, which enthusiastically supported their cause even as the national Republican Party was losing interest in Southern affairs.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Historian [[Walter L. Fleming]], associated with the early 20th-century [[Dunning School]], describes the mounting anger of Southern Whites:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fleming |first=Walter L. |url=https://archive.org/details/sequelofappomatt0032walt/ |title=The Sequel of Appomattox: A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States |date=1919 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=9780554271941 |series=Chronicles of America series |volume=32 |location=New Haven |page=21 |via=Archive.org}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=The Negro troops, even at their best, were everywhere considered offensive by the native whites.... The Negro soldier, impudent by reason of his new freedom, his new uniform, and his new gun, was more than Southern temper could tranquilly bear, and race conflicts were frequent.}}

Often, these White Southerners identified as the "Conservative Party" or the "Democratic and Conservative Party" in order to distinguish themselves from the national Democratic Party and to obtain support from former Whigs. These parties sent delegates to the [[1868 Democratic National Convention]] and abandoned their separate names by 1873 or 1874.{{sfnp|Perman|1985|p=6}}

Most White members of both the planter and business class and common farmer class of the South opposed Reconstruction, Black civil rights and military rule and sought [[white supremacy]]. Democrats nominated some Blacks for political office and tried to entice other Blacks from the Republican side. When these attempts to combine with the Blacks failed, the planters joined the common farmers in simply trying to displace the Republican governments. The planters and their business allies dominated the self-styled "conservative" coalition that finally took control in the South. They were paternalistic toward the Blacks but feared they would use power to raise taxes and slow business development.{{sfnp|Williams|1946}}

Fleming described the first results of the insurgent movement as "good", and the later ones as "both good and bad". According to Fleming (1907), the KKK "quieted the Negroes, made life and property safer, gave protection to women, stopped burnings, forced the Radical leaders to be more moderate, made the Negroes work better, drove the worst of the Radical leaders from the country and started the whites on the way to gain political supremacy".{{sfnp|Fleming|1906–1907|loc=Vol. II, p. 328}} The evil result, Fleming said, was that lawless elements "made use of the organization as a cloak to cover their misdeeds&nbsp;... The lynching habits of today [1907] are largely due to conditions, social and legal, growing out of Reconstruction."{{sfnp|Fleming|1906–1907|loc=Vol. II, pp. 328–329}} Historians have noted that the peak of [[Lynching in the United States|lynchings]] took place near the turn of the century, decades after Reconstruction ended, as Whites were imposing Jim Crow laws and passing new state constitutions that disenfranchised the Blacks. The lynchings were used for intimidation and social control, with a frequency associated more with economic stresses and the settlement of sharecropper accounts at the end of the season, than for any other reason.

In 1917, [[Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer]] explained:{{sfnp|Oberholtzer|1917|p=485}}
{{blockquote|1=Outrages upon the former slaves in the South there were in plenty. Their sufferings were many. But white men, too, were victims of lawless violence, and in all portions of the North and the late "rebel" states. Not a political campaign passed without the exchange of bullets, the breaking of skulls with sticks and stones, the firing of rival club-houses. Republican clubs marched the streets of Philadelphia, amid revolver shots and brickbats, to save the Negroes from the "rebel" savages in Alabama.... The project to make voters out of black men was not so much for their social elevation as for the further punishment of the Southern white people—for the capture of offices for Radical scamps and the entrenchment of the Radical party in power for a long time to come in the South and in the country at large.}}

At election times, whites people engaged in increased violence in attempts to run Republicans out of office and suppress Black voting. The victims of this violence were overwhelmingly African American, as in the [[Colfax Massacre]] of 1873. After federal suppression of the Klan in the early 1870s, white insurgent groups tried to avoid open conflict with federal forces. In 1874, in the [[Battle of Liberty Place]], the White League entered New Orleans with 5,000 members and defeated the police and militia, to occupy federal offices for three days in an attempt to overturn the disputed government of [[William Pitt Kellogg]], but they retreated before federal troops reached the city. None was prosecuted. Their election-time tactics included violent intimidation of African American and Republican voters prior to elections, while avoiding conflict with the U.S. Army or the state militias and then withdrawing completely on election day. White supremacist violence continued in both the North and South; the White Liners movement to elect candidates dedicated to white supremacy reached as far as Ohio in 1875.{{sfnp|McFeely|2002|pp=420–422}}

Historian Daniel Byman argues that white supremacist violence played a key role in the failure of Reconstruction. White supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and the Red Shirts engaged in terroristic acts against Black voters and white Republicans. They used assassinations, violence, and economic means to undermine and devastate Reconstruction efforts. He estimates that perhaps tens of thousands of Black Americans were murdered during this period. Byman argues that the federal government's failure to enforce Reconstruction policies enabled these white supremacy groups. The federal government did not commit enough military resources, and this enabled white supremacist groups to consolidate power. Reconstruction culminated in the Compromise of 1877 and the rollback of Black political rights.<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal |last=Byman |first=Daniel |date=2021 |title=White Supremacy, Terrorism, and the Failure of Reconstruction in the United States |url=https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/46/1/53/102853/White-Supremacy-Terrorism-and-the-Failure-of |journal=International Security |volume=46 |issue=1 |pages=53–103 |doi=10.1162/isec_a_00410 |via=MIT}}</ref>

===Redemption 1873–1877===
{{Main|Redeemers}}
The Redeemers were the Southern wing of the [[Bourbon Democrats]], the classically liberal, pro-business faction of the Democratic Party. They were a coalition which sought to regain political power, reestablish white supremacy, and oust the Radical Republicans from influence. Led by rich former planters, businessmen, and professionals, they dominated Southern politics in most areas from the 1870s to 1910.

====Republicans split nationally: election of 1872====
{{Main|1872 United States presidential election}}
As early as 1868, Supreme Court Chief Justice [[Salmon P. Chase]], a leading Radical during the war, concluded that:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Schuckers |first=J. W. |url=https://archive.org/details/lifepublicservic00schu/ |title=The Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase |date=1874 |pages=585 |publisher=New York, D. Appleton and Company |via=Archive.org}}; letter of May 30, 1868 to August Belmont.</ref>
{{blockquote|1=Congress was right in not limiting, by its Reconstruction acts, the right of suffrage to Whites; but wrong in the exclusion from suffrage of certain classes of citizens and all unable to take its prescribed retrospective oath, and wrong also in the establishment of despotic military governments for the states and in authorizing military commissions for the trial of civilians in time of peace. There should have been as little military government as possible; no military commissions; no classes excluded from suffrage; and no oath except one of faithful obedience and support to the Constitution and laws, and of sincere attachment to the constitutional government of the United States.}}

By 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant had alienated large numbers of leading Republicans, including many Radicals, by the corruption of his administration and his use of federal soldiers to prop up Radical state regimes in the South. The opponents, called "[[Liberal Republican Party (United States)|Liberal Republicans]]", included founders of the party who expressed dismay that the party had succumbed to corruption. They were further wearied by the continued insurgent violence of Whites against Blacks in the South, especially around every election cycle, which demonstrated that the war was not over and changes were fragile. Leaders included editors of some of the nation's most powerful newspapers. Charles Sumner, embittered by the corruption of the Grant administration, joined the new party, which nominated editor [[Horace Greeley]]. The loosely-organized Democratic Party also supported Greeley.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Grant made up for the defections by new gains among Union veterans and by strong support from the "[[Stalwart (politics)|Stalwart]]" faction of his party (which depended on his patronage), and the Southern Republican Party. Grant won with 55.6% of the vote to Greeley's 43.8%. The Liberal Republican Party vanished and many former supporters—even former abolitionists—abandoned the cause of Reconstruction.{{sfnp|McPherson|1875|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}

====The Republican coalition splinters in the South====
In the South, political and racial tensions built up inside the Republican Party as they were attacked by the Democrats. In 1868, Georgia Democrats, with support from some Republicans, expelled all 28 Black Republican members from the state house, arguing Blacks were eligible to vote but not to hold office. In most states, the more Whiggish Republicans fought for control with the more Radical Republicans and their Black allies. Most of the 430 Republican newspapers in the South were edited by native Southerners—only 20 percent were edited by northerners. White businessmen generally boycotted Republican papers, which survived through government patronage.<ref>{{cite book |title=Encyclopedia of American Journalism |date=2007 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9780415969505 |editor-last=Vaughn |editor-first=Stephen L. |location=London |page=441}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Abbott |first=Richard H. |title=For Free Press and Equal Rights: Republican Newspapers in the Reconstruction South |date=2004 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=9780820325279 |location=Athens, Georgia}}</ref> Nevertheless, in the increasingly bitter battles inside the Republican Party, those who supported Reconstruction usually lost; many of the disgruntled losers switched over to the Whig-leaning or Democratic side. In Mississippi, the Whiggish faction led by [[James Lusk Alcorn]] was decisively defeated by the Radical faction led by [[Adelbert Ames]]. The party lost support steadily as many supporters of Reconstruction left it; few recruits were acquired. The most bitter contest took place inside the Republican Party in Arkansas, where the two sides armed their forces and confronted each other in the streets; no actual combat took place in the [[Brooks–Baxter War]]. The faction led by [[Elisha Baxter]] finally prevailed when the White House intervened, but both sides were badly weakened, and the Democrats soon came to power.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Woodward |first=Earl F. |date=1971 |title=The Brooks and Baxter War in Arkansas, 1872–1874 |journal=[[Arkansas Historical Quarterly]] |volume=30 |issue=4 |pages=315–336 |doi=10.2307/40038083 |jstor=40038083}}</ref>

Meanwhile, in state after state the freedmen were demanding a bigger share of the offices and patronage, squeezing out white allies but never commanding the numbers equivalent to their population proportion. By the mid-1870s: "The hard realities of Southern political life had taught the lesson that black constituents needed to be represented by black officials."{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=537–541}} The financial depression increased the pressure on Reconstruction governments, dissolving progress.

Finally, some of the more prosperous freedmen were joining the Democrats, as they were angered at the failure of the Republicans to help them acquire land. The South was "sparsely settled"; only 10 percent of Louisiana was cultivated, and 90 percent of Mississippi bottom land was undeveloped in areas away from the river fronts, but freedmen often did not have the stake to get started. They hoped that the government would help them acquire land which they could work. Only South Carolina created any land redistribution, establishing a land commission and resettling about 14,000 freedmen families and some poor Whites on land purchased by the state.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=374–375}}

Although historians such as [[W. E. B. Du Bois]] celebrated a cross-racial coalition of poor Whites and Blacks, such coalitions rarely formed in these years. Writing in 1913, former Congressman Lynch, recalling his experience as a Black leader in Mississippi, explained that:{{sfnp|Lynch|1913|pp=107–108}}
{{blockquote|1=While the colored men did not look with favor upon a political alliance with the poor whites, it must be admitted that, with very few exceptions, that class of whites did not seek, and did not seem to desire such an alliance.}}

Lynch reported that poor Whites resented the job competition from freedmen. Furthermore, the poor Whites:{{sfnp|Lynch|1913|pp=108–109}}
{{blockquote|1=with a few exceptions, were less efficient, less capable, and knew less about matters of state and governmental administration than many of the former slaves.... As a rule, therefore, the Whites that came into the leadership of the Republican Party between 1872 and 1875 were representatives of the most substantial families of the land.}}

===Democrats try a "New Departure"===
{{Main|New Departure (Democrats)}}
[[File:A republican form of government and no domestic violence.jpg|thumb|''A Republican Form of Government and No Domestic Violence'', by [[Thomas Nast]], a political cartoon about the Wheeler Compromise in Louisiana, published in [[Harper's Weekly]], March 6, 1875]]

By 1870, the Democratic leadership across the South decided it had to end its opposition to Reconstruction and Black suffrage to survive and move on to new issues. The Grant administration had proven by its crackdown on the Ku Klux Klan that it would use as much federal power as necessary to suppress open anti-Black violence. Democrats in the North concurred with these Southern Democrats. They wanted to fight the Republican Party on economic grounds rather than race. The [[New Departure (Democrats)|New Departure]] offered the chance for a clean slate without having to re-fight the Civil War every election. Furthermore, many wealthy Southern landowners thought they could control part of the newly enfranchised Black electorate to their own advantage.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Not all Democrats agreed; an insurgent element continued to resist Reconstruction no matter what. Eventually, a group called "Redeemers" took control of the party in the Southern states.{{sfnp|Perman|1985|loc=ch. 3}} They formed coalitions with conservative Republicans, including supporters of Reconstruction, emphasizing the need for economic modernization. Railroad building was seen as a panacea since Northern capital was needed. The new tactics were a success in [[History of Virginia#Reconstruction|Virginia]] where [[William Mahone]] built a winning coalition. In Tennessee, the Redeemers formed a coalition with Republican Governor [[Dewitt Clinton Senter]]. Across the South, some Democrats switched from the race issue to taxes and corruption, charging that Republican governments were corrupt and inefficient. With a continuing decrease in cotton prices, taxes squeezed cash-poor farmers who rarely saw $20 in currency a year, but had to pay taxes in currency or lose their farms. But major planters, who had never paid taxes before, often recovered their property even after confiscation.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=374–376}}

In North Carolina, Republican Governor [[William Woods Holden]] used state troops against the Klan, but the prisoners were released by federal judges. Holden became the first governor in American history to be impeached and removed from office. Republican political disputes in Georgia split the party and enabled the Redeemers to take over.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=440–441}}

In the North, a live-and-let-live attitude made elections more like a sporting contest. But in the Deep South, many White citizens had not reconciled with the defeat of the war or the granting of citizenship to freedmen. As an Alabamian supporter of Reconstruction explained: "Our contest here is for life, for the right to earn our bread,&nbsp;... for a decent and respectful consideration as human beings and members of society."{{Sfn|Foner|1988|p=443}}

===Panic of 1873===
{{Main|Panic of 1873}}
The Panic of 1873 (a [[Long Depression|depression]]) hit the Southern economy hard and disillusioned many Republicans who had gambled that railroads would pull the South out of its poverty. The price of cotton fell by half; many small landowners, local merchants, and cotton factors (wholesalers) went bankrupt. Sharecropping for Black and White farmers became more common as a way to spread the risk of owning land. The old abolitionist element in the North was aging away, or had lost interest, and was not replenished. Many northern whites returned to the North or joined the Redeemers. Blacks had an increased voice in the Republican Party, but across the South it was divided by internal bickering and was rapidly losing its cohesion. Many local Black leaders started emphasizing individual economic progress in cooperation with White elites, rather than racial political progress in opposition to them, a conservative attitude that foreshadowed [[Booker T. Washington]].{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=545–547}}

Nationally, President Grant was blamed for the depression; the Republican Party lost 96 seats in all parts of the country in the [[United States House election, 1874|1874 elections]]. The Bourbon Democrats took control of the House and were confident of electing [[Samuel J. Tilden]] president in 1876. President Grant was not running for re-election and seemed to be losing interest in the South. States fell to the Redeemers, with only four in Republican hands in 1873: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Arkansas then fell after the violent [[Brooks–Baxter War]] in 1874 ripped apart the Republican Party there.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Panic of 1873 |url=https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/panic-of-1873-6385/ |access-date=2025-03-11 |website=Encyclopedia of Arkansas |language=en-US}}</ref>

===Violence===
In the lower South, violence increased as new insurgent groups arose, including the Red Shirts in Mississippi and the Carolinas, and the White League in Louisiana. The disputed election in Louisiana in 1872 found both Republican and Democratic candidates holding inaugural balls while returns were reviewed. Both certified their own slates for local parish offices in many places, causing local tensions to rise. Finally, federal support helped certify the Republican as governor.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Slates for local offices were certified by each candidate. In rural [[Grant Parish]] in the [[Red River of the South|Red River Valley]], freedmen fearing a Democratic attempt to take over the parish government reinforced defenses at the small Colfax courthouse in late March. White militias gathered from the area a few miles outside the settlement. Rumors and fears abounded on both sides. William Ward, an African American Union veteran and militia captain, mustered his company in [[Colfax, Louisiana|Colfax]] and went to the courthouse. On Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, the Whites attacked the defenders at the courthouse. There was confusion about who shot one of the White leaders after an offer by the defenders to surrender. It was a catalyst to mayhem. In the end, three Whites died and 120–150 Blacks were killed, some 50 that evening while being held as prisoners. The disproportionate numbers of Black to White fatalities and documentation of brutalized bodies are why contemporary historians call it the [[Colfax Massacre]] rather than the Colfax Riot, as it was known locally.{{sfnp|Lemann|2007|pp=15–21}}

This marked the beginning of heightened insurgency and attacks on Republican officeholders and freedmen in Louisiana and other Deep South states. In Louisiana, Judge T. S. Crawford and District Attorney P. H. Harris of the 12th Judicial District were shot off their horses and killed by ambush October 8, 1873, while going to court. One widow wrote to the Department of Justice that her husband was killed because he was a Union man, telling "the efforts made to screen those who committed a crime".<ref>''US Senate Journal'', January 13, 1875, pp.&nbsp;106–107.</ref>

Political violence was endemic in Louisiana. In 1874, the White militias coalesced into [[paramilitary organizations]] such as the [[White League]], first in parishes of the Red River Valley. The new organization operated openly and had political goals: the violent overthrow of Republican rule and suppression of Black voting. White League chapters soon rose in many rural parishes, receiving financing for advanced weaponry from wealthy men. In the [[Coushatta Massacre]] in 1874, the White League assassinated six White Republican officeholders and five to 20 Black witnesses outside [[Coushatta]], [[Red River Parish]]. Four of the White men were related to the Republican representative of the parish, who was married to a local woman; three were native to the region.<ref>{{cite journal |url= http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2004-01/reconstruction.html |first=Danielle |last=Alexander |title=Forty Acres and a Mule: The Ruined Hope of Reconstruction |journal=[[Humanities (journal)|Humanities]] |date=January–February 2004 |volume=25 |issue=1 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080916095443/http://neh.gov/news/humanities/2004-01/reconstruction.html |archive-date=September 16, 2008 |access-date=April 14, 2008}}</ref>

[[File:Harpers1874LouisianaOutrage.jpg|right|thumb|White Leaguers attacking the New Orleans integrated police force and state militia, Battle of Liberty Place, 1874]]
Later in 1874 the White League mounted a serious attempt to unseat the Republican governor of Louisiana, in a dispute that had simmered since the 1872 election. It brought 5,000 troops to New Orleans to engage and overwhelm forces of the metropolitan police and state militia to turn Republican Governor [[William P. Kellogg]] out of office and seat [[John McEnery (Louisiana politician)|John McEnery]]. The White League took over and held the state house and city hall, but they retreated before the arrival of reinforcing federal troops. Kellogg had asked for reinforcements before, and Grant finally responded, sending additional troops to try to quell violence throughout plantation areas of the Red River Valley, although 2,000 troops were already in the state.{{sfnp|Foner|1990|p=555–556}}

Similarly, the [[Red Shirts (Southern United States)|Red Shirts]], another paramilitary group, arose in 1875 in Mississippi and the Carolinas. Like the White League and White Liner rifle clubs, to which 20,000 men belonged in North Carolina alone, these groups operated as a "military arm of the Democratic Party", to restore White supremacy.<ref name="George C. Rable 1984, p.132">{{cite book |last=Rable |first=George C. |title=But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction |date=1984 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=9780820307107 |location=Athens |page=132}}</ref>

Democrats and many Northern Republicans agreed that Confederate nationalism and slavery were dead—the war goals were achieved—and further federal military interference was an undemocratic violation of historical Republican values. The victory of [[Rutherford B. Hayes]] in the hotly contested [[1875 Ohio gubernatorial election]] indicated his "let alone" policy toward the South would become Republican policy, as happened when he won the [[1876 Republican National Convention|1876 Republican nomination]] for president.<ref>{{Cite web |title=1876 Acceptance Speech |url=https://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/1876-acceptance-speech/ |access-date=2025-03-11 |website=Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums |language=en}}</ref>

This shift in federal attitude marked the beginning of a retreat from actively enforcing the Reconstruction policies in the south. As federal commitment declined, white supremacist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and the Red Shirts escalated their violent campaigns to suppress Black political participation. These acts of violence also aimed to dismantle Republican led governments and cause instability. Actions from these groups proved that a federal response was needed in order to sustain Reconstruction.  

Historians such as Daniel Byman argue that the failure of Reconstruction was driven not merely by political compromise alone, but by the federal government’s inability to suppress a campaign of racial terrorism. White supremacist groups used assassinations, beatings, arson, and coordinated intimidation to eliminate Black leadership and frighten freedmen away from voting. These were not isolated acts of violence, but part of a deliberate strategy to destroy Reconstruction. “The goal of this violence was not random terror,” Byman writes, “but targeted political control,” emphasizing that the collapse of Reconstruction was a calculated success for white supremacists, not an accidental failure.<ref name=":4" />
[[File:Kkk-carpetbagger-cartoon.jpg|thumb|A cartoon threatening that the KKK will lynch scalawags (left) and carpetbaggers (right) on March 4, 1869. Image is of Arad Simon Lakin ("Ohio") and Noah B. Cloud hanging from the tree. March 4, 1869 is the day Horatio Seymour, a Democrat, will supposedly become President. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, ''Independent Monitor,'' Sept. 1, 1868. The cartoonist had actual local politicians in mind. A full-scale scholarly history analyzes the cartoonː Guy W. Hubbs, ''Searching for Freedom after the Civil War: Klansman, Carpetbagger, Scalawag, and Freedman'' ̈(2015)]]

Federal enforcement measures such as the Enforcement Acts and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 were inconsistently applied and increasingly unpopular in the North. As Byman notes, “The lack of an enduring presence enables insurgents to simply wait out government forces,” likening the situation to failed modern counterinsurgency efforts. By the time of the Compromise of 1877, federal troops had been withdrawn from most of the South. This effectively signaled the end of Reconstruction enforcement. This resulting power vacuum allowed extremist groups to seize control of local governments and reimpose white supremacy.<ref name=":4" />

Historian Sarah Sullivan further argues that the violence of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction has been historically underestimated. Drawing from congressional hearings and testimonies, she documents how Klan members operated with impunity. They often targeted Black communities under the pretext of punishing “criminal behavior.” In reality, such crimes were often as simple as voting Republican or pursuing interracial relationships. “Blacks who contended for their rights and were not much afraid were deemed ‘very bad negroes’, a label that often resulted in death,” Sullivan writes, illustrating how assertions of basic rights could lead to lynching.<ref name=":3" />  

The Klan’s brutality extended to public torture, whipping, and murder, including the spectacle-style killings later associated with the Jim Crow era. Sullivan writes, “Lynchings done by the Ku Klux Klan acted under the pretext of all three…justice, race, and tradition…establishing a pattern of violence that persisted for decades.” These actions had a chilling effect on Black communities, where families were often too afraid to testify or report crimes. White Democratic lawmakers, some aligned with the Klan, frequently obstructed investigations. contributing to a culture of impunity.  Together, Byman and Sullivan demonstrated that the failure of Reconstruction was not a passive collapse, but a result of federal negligence. This negligence allowed for the increase of insurgent violence. As Byman explains, “White supremacists opposed to Reconstruction effectively mobilized their community, using terrorism as an intimidation tactic to undermine Black political power and force uncommitted white Southerners to their side.” Without federal protection, even Black citizens who attempted to participate in public life faced extreme danger. Sullivan’s research shows how that fear became an effective substitute for law, eroding democratic institutions at a local level.<ref name=":4" /> In the end, the collapse of Reconstruction was a warning. The story of its failure is ultimately the story of how democracy can unravel when governments tolerate political violence. The withdrawal of troops and the abandonment of Reconstruction allowed terror to dictate power in the South. This not only dismantled the gains made after emancipation but laid the foundation for systemic racial injustice that persisted well into the 20th century.
[[File:Worse than Slavery (1874), by Thomas Nast.jpg|thumb|This cartoon, drawn by Thomas Nast and published in ''Harper’s Weekly'' in 1874 shows how life for African Americans after the Civil War had become even more dangerous than during slavery. It highlights the brutal violence and lawlessness unleashed by groups like the KKK once the government stopped protecting freed people. A depiction of a burning schoolhouse is shown in the shield.]]

An explosion of violence accompanied the campaign for [[Mississippi Plan|Mississippi's 1875 election]], in which Red Shirts and Democratic rifle clubs, operating in the open, threatened or shot enough Republicans to decide the election for the Democrats. Hundreds of Black men were killed. Republican Governor [[Adelbert Ames]] asked Grant for federal troops to fight back; Grant initially refused, saying public opinion was "tired out" of the perpetual troubles in the South. Ames fled the state as the Democrats took over Mississippi.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=606}}

The campaigns and elections of 1876 were marked by additional murders and attacks on Republicans in Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. In South Carolina the campaign season of 1876 was marked by murderous outbreaks and fraud against freedmen. Red Shirts paraded with arms behind Democratic candidates; they killed Blacks in the [[Hamburg Massacre|Hamburg]] and [[Ellenton, South Carolina|Ellenton]], South Carolina massacres. One historian estimated 150 Blacks were killed in the weeks before the 1876 election across South Carolina. Red Shirts prevented almost all Black voting in two majority-Black counties.{{sfnp|Lemann|2007|p=174}} The Red Shirts were also active in North Carolina.

A 2019 study found that counties that were occupied by the U.S. Army to enforce enfranchisement of emancipated slaves were more likely to elect Black politicians. The study also found that "political murders by White-supremacist groups occurred less frequently" in these counties than in Southern counties that were not occupied.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Chacón |first1=Mario L. |last2=Jensen |first2=Jeffrey L. |title=Democratization, De Facto Power, and Taxation: Evidence from Military Occupation during Reconstruction |journal=World Politics |volume=72 |pages=1–46 |doi=10.1017/S0043887119000157 |issn=0043-8871 |date=2020|s2cid=211320983 }}</ref>

===Election of 1876===
{{Main|1876 United States presidential election}}
Reconstruction continued in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida until 1877. The elections of 1876 were accompanied by heightened violence across the Deep South. A combination of [[ballot stuffing]] and intimidating Blacks suppressed their vote even in majority Black counties. The White League was active in Louisiana. After Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won the disputed [[U.S. presidential election, 1876|1876 presidential election]], the national [[Compromise of 1877]] (a [[corrupt bargain]]) was reached.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

The White Democrats in the South agreed to accept Hayes' victory if he withdrew the last federal troops. By this point, the North was weary of insurgency. White Democrats controlled most of the Southern legislatures and armed militias controlled small towns and rural areas. Blacks considered Reconstruction a failure because the federal government withdrew from enforcing their ability to exercise their rights as citizens.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=604}}

===Hayes ends Reconstruction===
{{Main|Electoral Commission (United States)|Compromise of 1877}}
[[File:President Rutherford Hayes 1870 - 1880.jpg|thumb|upright|right|[[Rutherford B. Hayes]], 19th [[President of the United States]] (1877–1881)]]
On January 29, 1877, President Grant signed the [[Electoral Commission (United States)|Electoral Commission Act]], which set up a 15-member commission of eight Republicans and seven Democrats to settle the disputed 1876 election. Since the Constitution did not explicitly indicate how Electoral College disputes were to be resolved, Congress was forced to consider other methods to settle the crisis. Many Democrats argued that Congress as a whole should determine which certificates to count. However, the chances that this method would result in a harmonious settlement were slim, as the Democrats controlled the House, while the Republicans controlled the Senate. Several Hayes supporters, on the other hand, argued that the President pro tempore of the Senate had the authority to determine which certificates to count, because he was responsible for chairing the congressional session at which the electoral votes were to be tallied. Since the office of president pro tempore was occupied by a Republican, Senator [[Thomas W. Ferry]] of [[Michigan]], this method would have favored Hayes. Still others proposed that the matter should be settled by the Supreme Court.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Hayes vs. Tilden: The Electoral College Controversy of 1876–1877 |url=https://elections.harpweek.com/Controversy.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010124080100/http://elections.harpweek.com/Controversy.htm |archive-date=January 24, 2001 |access-date=May 14, 2021 |website=HarpWeek}}</ref> In a stormy session that began on March 1, 1877, the House debated the objection for about twelve hours before overruling it. Immediately, another spurious objection was raised, this time to the electoral votes from [[1876 United States presidential election in Wisconsin|Wisconsin]]. Again, the Senate voted to overrule the objection, while a filibuster was conducted in the House. However, the Speaker of the House, Democrat [[Samuel J. Randall]], refused to entertain dilatory motions. Eventually, the filibusterers gave up, allowing the House to reject the objection in the early hours of March 2. The House and Senate then reassembled to complete the count of the electoral votes. At 4:10 am on March 2, [[Thomas W. Ferry|Senator Ferry]] announced that Hayes and [[William A. Wheeler|Wheeler]] had been elected to the [[President of the United States|presidency]] and [[Vice President of the United States|vice presidency]], by an electoral margin of 185–184.

The Democrats agreed not to block Hayes' inauguration based on a "back room" deal. Key to this deal was the understanding that federal troops would no longer interfere in Southern politics despite substantial election-associated violence against Blacks. The Southern states indicated that they would protect the lives of African Americans; however, such promises were largely not kept. Hayes' friends also let it be known that he would promote federal aid for [[internal improvements]], including help with a railroad in Texas (which never happened) and name a Southerner to his cabinet (this did happen). With the end to the political role of Northern troops, the president had no method to enforce Reconstruction; thus, this "back room" deal signaled the end of American Reconstruction.{{sfnp|Woodward|1966|pp=3–15}}

After assuming office on March 4, 1877, President Hayes removed troops from the capitals of the remaining Reconstruction states, Louisiana and South Carolina, allowing the [[Redeemers]] to have full control of these states. President Grant had already removed troops from Florida, before Hayes was inaugurated, and troops from the other Reconstruction states had long since been withdrawn. Hayes appointed [[David M. Key]] from Tennessee, a Southern Democrat, to the position of [[United States Postmaster General|postmaster general]]. By 1879, thousands of African American "[[Exodusters]]" packed up and headed to new opportunities in Kansas.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Painter |first=Nell Irvin |title=Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction |date=1976 |publisher=Norton |isbn=9780393009514 |location=New York |author-link=Nell Irvin Painter}}</ref>

The Democrats gained control of the Senate, and had complete control of Congress, having taken over the House in 1875. Hayes vetoed bills from the Democrats that outlawed the Republican Enforcement Acts; however, with the military underfunded, Hayes could not adequately enforce these laws. African-Americans remained involved in Southern politics, particularly in Virginia, which was run by the biracial [[Readjuster Party]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Moore |first=James T. |date=May 1975 |title=Black Militancy in Readjuster Virginia, 1879–1883 |journal=[[Journal of Southern History]] |volume=41 |issue=2 |pages=167–186 |doi=10.2307/2206012 |jstor=2206012}}</ref>

Numerous African-Americans were elected to local office through the 1880s, and in the 1890s in some states, biracial coalitions of populists and Republicans briefly held control of state legislatures. In the last decade of the 19th century, Southern states elected five Black U.S. congressmen before disenfranchising state constitutions were passed throughout the former Confederacy.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

==Legacy and historiography==
[[File:Map of Reconstruction in the United States 1861 to 1877.jpg|thumb|Map of Reconstruction in the United States 1861 to 1877]]
Besides the election of Southern black people to state governments and the United States Congress, other achievements of the Reconstruction era include "the South's first state-funded public school systems, more equitable taxation legislation, laws against racial discrimination in public transport and accommodations and ambitious economic development programs (including aid to railroads and other enterprises)."<ref>{{cite web |title=Reconstruction |url=https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210121184529/https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction |archive-date=January 21, 2021 |access-date=January 24, 2021 |website=[[History (American TV network)|History.com]]}}</ref> Despite these achievements the interpretation of Reconstruction has been a topic of controversy because nearly all historians hold that Reconstruction ended in failure, but for very different reasons.

The first generation of Northern historians believed that the former Confederates were traitors and Johnson was their ally who threatened to undo the Union's constitutional achievements. By the 1880s, however, Northern historians argued that Johnson and his allies were not traitors but had blundered badly in rejecting the Fourteenth Amendment and setting the stage for Radical Reconstruction.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Green |first=Fletcher M. |date=November 1936 |title=Walter Lynwood Fleming: Historian of Reconstruction |journal=[[Journal of Southern History]] |volume=2 |issue=4 |pages=497–521 |doi=10.2307/2192035|jstor=2192035 }}</ref>

The Black leader [[Booker T. Washington]], who grew up in [[West Virginia]] during Reconstruction, concluded later that: "the Reconstruction experiment in racial democracy failed because it began at the wrong end, emphasizing political means and civil rights acts rather than economic means and self-determination".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Harlan |first=Louis R. |title=Booker T. Washington in Perspective |date=1988 |publisher=University Press of Mississippi |isbn=9780878053742 |editor-last=Smock |editor-first=Raymond |location=Jackson |pages=164}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Taylor |first=A. A. |date=January 1938 |title=Historians of the Reconstruction |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.2307/2714704 |journal=[[The Journal of Negro History]] |volume=23 |issue=1 |pages=16–34 |doi=10.2307/2714704|jstor=2714704 |s2cid=150066533 |url-access=subscription }}</ref> His solution was to concentrate on building the economic infrastructure of the Black community, in part by his leadership and the Southern [[Tuskegee Institute]].

===Dunning School, 1900s–1920s===
The [[Dunning School]] of scholars, who were trained at the history department of [[Columbia University]] under Professor [[William A. Dunning]], analyzed Reconstruction as a failure after 1866 for different reasons. They claimed that Congress took freedoms and rights from qualified Whites and gave them to unqualified Blacks who were being duped by what they called "corrupt carpetbaggers and scalawags". As [[T. Harry Williams]] (who was a sharp critic of the Dunning School) noted, the Dunning scholars portrayed the era in stark terms:{{sfnp|Williams|1946|p=473}}
{{blockquote|1=Reconstruction was a battle between two extremes: the Democrats, as the group which included the vast majority of the whites, standing for decent government and racial supremacy, versus the Republicans, the Negroes, alien carpetbaggers, and renegade scalawags, standing for dishonest government and alien ideals. These historians wrote literally in terms of white and black.}}

===Revisionists and Beardians, 1930s–1940s===
In the 1930s, [[historical revisionism]] became popular among scholars. As disciples of [[Charles A. Beard]], revisionists focused on economics, downplaying politics and constitutional issues. The central figure was a young scholar at the University of Wisconsin, [[Howard K. Beale]], who in his PhD dissertation, finished in 1924, developed a complex new interpretation of Reconstruction. The Dunning School portrayed freedmen as mere pawns in the hands of northern whites. Beale argued that the whites themselves were pawns in the hands of Northern industrialists, who had taken control of the nation during the Civil War and who Beale felt would be threatened by return to power of the Southern Whites. Beale further argued that the rhetoric of civil rights for Blacks, and the dream of equality, was rhetoric designed to fool idealistic voters, calling it "claptrap", arguing: "Constitutional discussions of the rights of the Negro, the status of Southern states, the legal position of ex-rebels, and the powers of Congress and the president determined nothing. They were pure sham."<ref>{{cite book |last=Beale |first=Howard K. |url=https://archive.org/details/criticalyearstud0000beal/page/n5/mode/2up |title=The Critical Year; A study of Andrew Johnson and reconstruction |publisher=F. Ungar |year=1958 |place=New York |page=147 |oclc=458675179 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Hugh |last=Tulloch |title=The Debate on the American Civil War Era |year=1999 |publisher=Manchester University Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AVD1-qcknywC&pg=PA226 |page=226 |isbn=978-0-7190-4938-5}}</ref> The Beard–Beale interpretation of Reconstruction became known as "revisionism", and replaced the Dunning School for most historians until the 1950s, after which it was largely discredited.<ref>{{cite book |last=Charles |first=Allan D. |title=Twentieth-century American Historians |date=1983 |publisher=Gale Research |isbn=9780810311442 |editor-last=Wilson |editor-first=Clyde N. |location=Detroit |pages=32–38 |chapter=Howard K Beale}}</ref>{{sfnp|Williams|1946}}{{sfnp|Stampp|Litwack|1969|pp=85–106}}{{sfnp|Montgomery|1967|pp=vii–ix}}

The Beardian interpretation of the causes of the Civil War downplayed slavery, abolitionism, and issues of morality. It ignored constitutional issues of states' rights and even ignored American nationalism as the force that finally led to victory in the war. Indeed, the ferocious combat itself was passed over as merely an ephemeral event. Much more important was the calculus of class conflict. As the Beards explained in ''The Rise of American Civilization'' (1927), the Civil War was really a:<ref>{{cite book |last1=Beard |first1=Charles A. |url=https://archive.org/details/riseofamericanci02bear |title=The Rise of American Civilization |last2=Beard |first2=Mary R. |publisher=Macmillan |year=1927 |volume=2 |place=New York |page=54 |name-list-style=amp |via=Archive.org}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=social cataclysm in which the capitalists, laborers, and farmers of the North and West drove from power in the national government the planting aristocracy of the South.}}

The Beards were especially interested in the Reconstruction era, as the industrialists of the Northeast and the farmers of the West cashed in on their great victory over the Southern aristocracy. Historian [[Richard Hofstadter]] paraphrases the Beards as arguing that in victory:<ref>{{cite book |first=Richard |last=Hofstadter |title=Progressive Historians |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=iLdMzbv2IDQC&pg=PT458 |orig-year=1968 |date=2012 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday |page=303 |isbn=978-0-307-80960-5}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=the Northern capitalists were able to impose their economic program, quickly passing a series of measures on tariffs, banking, homesteads, and immigration that guaranteed the success of their plans for economic development. Solicitude for the freedmen had little to do with Northern policies. The Fourteenth Amendment, which gave the Negro his citizenship, Beard found significant primarily as a result of a conspiracy of a few legislative draftsmen friendly to corporations to use the supposed elevation of the blacks as a cover for a fundamental law giving strong protection to business corporations against regulation by state government.}}

[[William B. Hesseltine]], a [[socialist]] politician and historian, adhered to the point that there were Northeastern businessmen wanting to control the Southern economy before and after the war, implying that they did by owning railroads.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hesseltine |first=William B. |date=1935 |title=Economic Factors in the Abandonment of Reconstruction |journal=[[Mississippi Valley Historical Review]] |volume=22 |issue=2 |pages=191–210 |doi=10.2307/1898466 |jstor=1898466}}</ref> In his book, ''A History of The South 1607-1936'', he wrote "when the war closed, Northern business men looked to the South as a colony into which business might expand". Further in the same book, he wrote: "Moderates, Liberals, and Democrats continued to deplore Southern conditions until the Northern business man was persuaded that only a restoration of native white government would bring the peace necessary for economic penetration into the South."<ref name="Hesseltine1936">{{cite book |last1=Hesseltine |first1=William B. |title=A History Of The South 1607 1936 |date=1936 |pages=578, 640 |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.153241/page/n597/mode/2up?view=theater}}</ref>

The Beard–Beale interpretation of the monolithic Northern industrialists fell apart in the 1950s when it was closely examined by numerous historians, including Robert P. Sharkey, Irwin Unger, and Stanley Coben.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Coben |first=Stanley |date=1959 |title=Northeastern Business and Radical Reconstruction: A Re-examination |journal=[[Mississippi Valley Historical Review]] |volume=46 |issue=1 |pages=67–90 |doi=10.2307/1892388 |jstor=1892388}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Pressly |first=Thomas J. |date=1961 |title=''Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction'' (review) |journal=[[Civil War History]] |volume=7 |pages=91–92 |doi=10.1353/cwh.1961.0063 |s2cid=144355361}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |jstor=20089450 |title=Radical Republicanism in Pennsylvania, 1866–1873 |journal=The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography |volume=85 |issue=4 |pages=439–457 |last=Montgomery |first=David |date=1961}}</ref> The younger scholars conclusively demonstrated that there was no unified economic policy on the part of the dominant Republican Party. Some wanted high tariffs and some low. Some wanted greenbacks and others wanted gold. There was no conspiracy to use Reconstruction to impose any such unified economic policy on the nation. Northern businessmen were widely divergent on monetary or tariff policy, and seldom paid attention to Reconstruction issues. Furthermore, the rhetoric on behalf of the rights of the freedmen was not claptrap but deeply-held and very serious political philosophy.{{sfnp|Stampp|Litwack|1969|pp=85–106}}{{sfn|Foner|1983|pp=39-40}}{{sfnp|Montgomery|1967|pp=vii–ix}}

===Black historians===
The Black scholar [[W. E. B. Du Bois]], in his ''[[Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880|Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880]]'', published in 1935,<ref>{{cite book |last=Du Bois |first=W. E. B. |url=https://archive.org/details/blackreconstruc00dubo/ |title=Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 |date=1935 |publisher=Harcourt, Brace and Company |isbn= |location=New York |author-link=W. E. B. Du Bois |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref> compared results across the states to show achievements by the Reconstruction legislatures and to refute claims about wholesale African American control of governments. He showed Black contributions, as in the establishment of universal public education, charitable and social institutions and [[universal suffrage]] as important results, and he noted their collaboration with Whites. He also pointed out that Whites benefited most by the financial deals made, and he put excesses in the perspective of the war's aftermath. He noted that despite complaints, several states kept their Reconstruction-era state constitutions into the early 20th century. Despite receiving favorable reviews, his work was largely ignored by White historians of his time.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Jones |first=Martha S. |date=January 7, 2022 |title=Nine decades later, W.E.B. Du Bois's work faces familiar criticisms |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/nine-decades-later-web-du-boiss-work-faces-familiar-criticisms/2022/01/07/9f926968-6445-11ec-8ce3-9454d0b46d42_story.html |access-date=February 2, 2024 |newspaper=Washington Post |issn=0190-8286}}</ref>

===Neo-abolitionists===
In the 1960s, [[Neoabolitionism (race relations)|neo-abolitionist]] historians emerged, led by [[John Hope Franklin]], [[Kenneth Stampp]], [[Leon Litwack]], and [[Eric Foner]]. Influenced by the [[civil rights movement]], they rejected the Dunning School and found a great deal to praise in Radical Reconstruction. Foner, the primary advocate of this view, argued that it was never truly completed, and that a "Second Reconstruction" was needed in the late 20th century to complete the goal of full equality for African Americans. The neo-abolitionists followed the revisionists in minimizing the corruption and waste created by Republican state governments, saying it was no worse than [[William M. Tweed|Boss Tweed]]'s ring in New York City.{{sfnp|Williams|1946|p=469}}{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=xxii}}

Instead, they emphasized that suppression of the rights of African Americans was a worse scandal, and a grave corruption of America's [[Republicanism|republicanist]] ideals. They argued that the tragedy of Reconstruction was not that it failed because Blacks were incapable of governing, especially as they did not dominate any state government, but that it failed because Whites raised an insurgent movement to restore White supremacy. White-elite-dominated state legislatures passed disenfranchising state constitutions from 1890 to 1908 that effectively barred most Blacks and many poor Whites from voting. This disenfranchisement affected millions of people for decades into the 20th century, and closed African Americans {{em|and}} poor Whites out of the political process in the South.<ref name="Glenn Feldman 2004, pp. 135–136">{{cite book |last=Feldman |first=Glenn |title=The Disfranchisement Myth: Poor Whites and Suffrage Restriction in Alabama |date=2004 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=9780820326153 |location=Athens |pages=135–136}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |url=https://ssrn.com/abstract=224731 |first=Richard H. |last=Pildes |title=Democracy, Anti-democracy, and the Canon |journal=Constitutional Commentary |volume=17 |date=2000 |page=27 |access-date=March 15, 2008 |archive-date=November 21, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181121211213/https://ssrn.com/abstract=224731 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Re-establishment of White supremacy meant that within a decade African Americans were excluded from virtually all local, state, and federal governance in all states of the South. Lack of representation meant that they were treated as second-class citizens, with schools and services consistently underfunded in segregated societies, no [[jury service|representation on juries]] or in [[law enforcement]], and [[bias]] in other legislation. It was not until the [[civil rights movement]] and the passage of the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] and the [[Voting Rights Act]] of 1965 that segregation was outlawed and suffrage restored, under what has in retrospect been referred to as the "Second Reconstruction".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=McPherson |first=James M. |date=1978 |title=The Dimensions of Change: The First and Second Reconstructions |journal=The Wilson Quarterly |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=135–144 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Codrington III |first=Wilfred |date=2020-07-20 |title=The United States Needs a Third Reconstruction |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/united-states-needs-third-reconstruction/614293/ |access-date=2024-03-03 |website=The Atlantic |language=en}}</ref>

In 1990, [[Eric Foner]] concluded that from the Black point of view "Reconstruction must be judged a failure."{{sfnp|Foner|1990|p=255}}<ref>{{harvnb|Foner|1990|p=256}}: Foner adds: "What remains certain is that Reconstruction failed, and that for blacks its failure was a disaster whose magnitude cannot be obscured by the accomplishments that endured."</ref> Foner stated Reconstruction was "a noble if flawed experiment, the first attempt to introduce a genuine inter-racial democracy in the United States".<ref name="Foner 2009" /> According to him, the many factors contributing to the failure included: lack of a permanent federal agency ''specifically'' designed for the enforcement of civil rights; the [[Morrison R. Waite]] Supreme Court decisions that dismantled previous congressional civil rights legislation; and the economic reestablishment of Whiggish white planters in the South by 1877. Historian [[William McFeely]] explained that although the constitutional amendments and civil rights legislation on their own merit were remarkable achievements, no permanent government agency whose specific purpose was civil rights enforcement had been created.{{refn|group="lower-roman"|Although Grant and Attorney General Amos T. Akerman set up a strong legal system to protect African Americans, the Department of Justice did not set up a permanent Civil Rights Division until the [[Civil Rights Act of 1957]].{{sfnp|McFeely|2002|pp=372–373; 424, 425}}}}

More recent work by Nina Silber, [[David W. Blight]], Cecelia O'Leary, Laura Edwards, LeeAnn Whites, and Edward J. Blum has encouraged greater attention to race, religion, and issues of gender while at the same time pushing the effective end of Reconstruction to the end of the 19th century, while monographs by Charles Reagan Wilson, Gaines Foster, W. Scott Poole, and Bruce Baker have offered new views of the Southern "[[Lost Cause of the Confederacy|Lost Cause]]".<ref name="whatreconstructionmeant">{{cite book |last=Baker |first=Bruce E. |title=What Reconstruction Meant: Historical Memory in the American South |date=2007 |publisher=University of Virginia Press |isbn=9780813926605 |location=Charlottesville}}</ref>{{sfnp|Brown|2008|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}

===Dating the end of the Reconstruction era===
At the national level, textbooks typically date the era from 1865 to 1877. Eric Foner's textbook of national history ''Give Me Liberty'' is an example.<ref>{{cite book |last=Foner |first=Eric |year=2017 |title=Give me liberty! : an American history. volume 2, From 1865 |place=New York |publisher=W.W. Norton & Company. C |edition= Brief 5th |isbn=9780393603408 |oclc=1019904631}}</ref> His monograph ''Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877'' (1988) focusing on the situation in the South, covers 1863 to 1865. While 1877 is the usual date given for the end of Reconstruction, some historians such as [[Orville Vernon Burton]] extend the era to the 1890s to include the imposition of segregation.<ref>{{cite book |author=Burton |first=Orville Vernon |title=The Age of Lincoln |publisher=Hill and Wang |year=2007 |isbn=9780809095131 |edition=1st |place=New York |page=312 |author-link=Orville Vernon Burton}}</ref>

The year 1877 is also commonly used as a dividing point for two-semester survey courses and two-volume textbooks that aim to cover all of U.S. history.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Locks |first1=Catherine |last2=Mergel |first2=Sarah |last3=Roseman |first3=Pamela |last4=Spike |first4=Tamara |last5=Lasseter |first5=Marie |title=History in the Making: A History of the People of the United States of America to 1877 |journal=History Open Textbooks |date=1 October 2013 |url=https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/history-textbooks/1/ |access-date=21 August 2022 |archive-date=December 9, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221209075238/https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/history-textbooks/1/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Locke |first1=Joseph L. |last2=Wright |first2=Ben |title=The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook |date=2022 |publisher=Stanford University Press |url=https://www.americanyawp.com/ |access-date=21 August 2022 |archive-date=August 21, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220821215427/https://www.americanyawp.com/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Watson |first1=Harry L. |title=Building the American Republic |date=2018 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |url=https://press.uchicago.edu/sites/buildingtheamericanrepublic/index.html |access-date=21 August 2022 |archive-date=August 20, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220820022856/https://press.uchicago.edu/sites/buildingtheamericanrepublic/index.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Economic role of race===
Economists and economic historians have different interpretations of the economic impact of race on the postwar Southern economy. In 1995, Robert Whaples took a random survey of 178 members of the [[Economic History Association]], who studied American history in all time periods. He asked whether they wholly or partly accepted, or rejected, 40 propositions in the scholarly literature about American economic history. The greatest difference between economics PhDs and history PhDs came in questions on competition and race. For example, the proposition originally put forward by [[Robert Higgs]], "in the post-bellum South economic competition among Whites played an important part in protecting blacks from racial coercion", was accepted in whole or part by 66% of the economists, but by only 22% of the historians. Whaples says this highlights: "A recurring difference dividing historians and economists. The economists have more faith in the power of the competitive market. For example, they see the competitive market as protecting disenfranchised blacks and are less likely to accept the idea that there was exploitation by merchant monopolists."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Whaples |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Whaples |journal=[[The Journal of Economic History]] |volume=55 |issue=1 |pages=139–154 |jstor=2123771 |title=Where Is There Consensus Among American Economic Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions |date=March 1995 |doi=10.1017/S0022050700040602|s2cid=145691938 }}</ref>

===The "failure" issue===
Reconstruction is widely considered a failure, though the reason for this is a matter of controversy.
* The [[Dunning School]] considered failure inevitable because it felt that taking the right to vote or hold office away from Southern Whites was a violation of republicanism.
* A second school sees the reason for failure as Northern Republicans' lack of effectiveness in guaranteeing political rights to Blacks.{{citation needed|date=February 2018}}
* A third school blames the failure on not giving land to the freedmen so they could have their own economic base of power.{{citation needed|date=February 2018}}
* A fourth school sees the major reason for the failure of Reconstruction as the states' inability to suppress the violence of Southern Whites when they sought reversal for Blacks' gains. Etcheson (2009) points to the "violence that crushed black aspirations and the abandonment by Northern whites of Southern Republicans".<ref>{{cite book |first=Vernon |last=Burton |chapter=Civil War and Reconstruction |editor-first=William L. |editor-last=Barney |title=A Companion to 19th-century America |date=2006 |pages=54–56}}</ref> Etcheson wrote that it is hard to see Reconstruction "as concluding in anything but failure". Etcheson adds: "W. E. B. DuBois captured that failure well when he wrote in ''Black Reconstruction in America'' (1935): 'The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.{{'"}}<ref>{{cite journal |first=Nicole |last=Etcheson |title=Reconstruction and the Making of a Free-Labor South |journal=Reviews in American History |volume=37 |issue=2 |date=June 2009|pages=236–242 |doi=10.1353/rah.0.0101 |s2cid=146573684 }}</ref>
* Other historians emphasize the failure to fully incorporate Southern Unionists into the Republican coalition. Derek W. Frisby points to "Reconstruction's failure to appreciate the challenges of [[Southern Unionism]] and incorporate these loyal Southerners into a strategy that would positively affect the character of the peace".<ref>{{cite book |last=Frisby |first=Derek W. |title=The Great Task Remaining Before Us: Reconstruction as America's Continuing Civil War |date=2010 |publisher=Fordham University Press |isbn=9780823232024 |editor-last=Cimbala |editor-first=Paul |location=New York |page=9 |chapter=A Victory Spoiled: West Tennessee Unionists During Reconstruction}}</ref>

Historian Donald R. Shaffer maintained that the gains during Reconstruction for African Americans were not entirely extinguished. The legalization of African American marriages and families and the independence of Black churches from White denominations were a source of strength during the [[Jim Crow laws|Jim Crow]] era. Reconstruction was never forgotten within the Black community and it remained a source of inspiration. The system of [[sharecropping]] granted Blacks a considerable amount of freedom as compared to slavery.{{sfnp|Zuczek|2006 |loc=Vol. 1 pp. 20, 22}}

Historian [[Eric Foner]] argues:<ref>{{harvp|Foner|1988|p=604}} reprinted in: {{cite book |editor-first= Francis G. |editor-last= Couvares |display-editors= etal |title= Interpretations of American History Vol. I Through Reconstruction |edition= 7th | url= https://books.google.com/books?id=DVNhXPy6suoC&pg=PA409 |date= 2000 |page= 409 |publisher= Simon and Schuster |isbn= 978-0-684-86773-1}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1= What remains certain is that Reconstruction failed, and that for Blacks its failure was a disaster whose magnitude cannot be obscured by the genuine accomplishments that did endure.}}

Historian [[Annette Gordon-Reed]] described in an October 2015 article for ''[[The Atlantic]]'' magazine the effects if Reconstruction had not failed.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Gordon-Reed |first1=Annette |title=What If Reconstruction Hadn't Failed? |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/what-if-reconstruction-hadnt-failed/412219/ |access-date=May 5, 2024 |publisher=The Atlantic |date=October 26, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231114185238/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/what-if-reconstruction-hadnt-failed/412219/ |archive-date=November 14, 2023}}</ref> However, in 2014, historian Mark Summers argued that the "failure" question should be looked at from the viewpoint of the war goals; in that case, he argues:{{sfnp|Summers|2014|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=2-1wBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA4 4]}}
{{blockquote|1=If we see Reconstruction's purpose as making sure that the main goals of the war would be fulfilled, of a Union held together forever, of a North and South able to work together, of slavery extirpated, and sectional rivalries confined, of the permanent banishment of the fear of vaunting appeals to state sovereignty, backed by armed force, then Reconstruction looks like what in that respect it was, a lasting and unappreciated success.}}

===Historiographical Interpretations===
Historians have long debated the legacy of the Reconstruction era, with interpretations evolving significantly over time. One of the most influential and contested narratives was advanced by the Dunning school, which characterized Reconstruction as a misguided experiment that led to widespread corruption and social disorder. This view marginalized the experiences and achievements of African Americans during Reconstruction and perpetuated myths of white Southern victimhood. Contemporary scholars, including Hannah Rosen, have challenged these interpretations by emphasizing the era's transformative potential and highlighting the efforts of freedmen and their allies to establish civil rights and social equality.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pierce |first=Jennifer L. |date=2014 |editor-last=Morning |editor-first=Ann |title=Why Teaching About Race as a Social Construct Still Matters |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43653942 |journal=Sociological Forum |volume=29 |issue=1 |pages=259–264 |doi=10.1111/socf.12079 |jstor=43653942 |issn=0884-8971}}</ref> Rosen argues that understanding Reconstruction requires acknowledging both its profound advancements in racial justice and the systemic backlash that sought to undermine them. This historiographical shift has underscored the importance of accurate and inclusive narratives, illustrating how public memory has been shaped by political and cultural forces, and how these narratives continue to influence contemporary discussions on race and justice.

===In popular culture===
[[File:Gone With The Wind 1967 re-release.jpg|thumb|right|A poster for the 1939 epic film ''[[Gone with the Wind (film)|Gone with the Wind]]'', which is set during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras]]
The journalist [[Joel Chandler Harris]], who wrote under the name "Joe Harris" for the ''Atlanta Constitution'' (mostly after Reconstruction), tried to advance racial and sectional reconciliation in the late 19th century. He supported [[Henry W. Grady]]'s vision of a [[New South]] during Grady's time as editor from 1880 to 1889. Harris wrote many editorials in which he encouraged Southerners to accept the changed conditions along with some Northern influences, but he asserted his belief that change should proceed under White supremacy.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor=40580412 |title=Joel Chandler Harris, the Yeoman Tradition, and the New South Movement |journal=The Georgia Historical Quarterly |volume=61 |issue=4 |pages=308–317 |last=Mixon |first=Wayne |date=1977}}</ref>

In popular literature, two early 20th-century novels by [[Thomas Dixon Jr.]]&nbsp;– ''[[The Leopard's Spots]]: A [[Romanticism|Romance]] of the White Man's Burden – 1865–1900'' (1902), and ''[[The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan]]'' (1905)&nbsp;– idealized White resistance to Northern and Black coercion, hailing vigilante action by the [[Ku Klux Klan]].<ref>{{cite journal |first=Maxwell |last=Bloomfield |title=Dixon's ''The Leopard's Spots'': A Study in Popular Racism |journal=American Quarterly |volume=16 |issue=3 |date=1964 |pages=387–401 |doi=10.2307/2710931 |jstor=2710931 |url=http://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1864&context=scholar |access-date=February 7, 2017 |archive-date=April 29, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190429095029/https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1864&context=scholar |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref> [[D. W. Griffith]] adapted Dixon's ''The Clansman'' for the screen in his anti-Republican movie ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]'' (1915); it stimulated the formation of the 20th-century version of the KKK. Many other authors romanticized the supposed benevolence of slavery and the elite world of the antebellum plantations, in memoirs and histories which were published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; the [[United Daughters of the Confederacy]] promoted influential works which were written in these genres by women.<ref name="Gardner">{{cite book |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=-xG7Dfsxya8C |first=Sarah E. |last=Gardner |title=Blood and Irony: Southern White Women's Narratives of the Civil War, 1861–1937 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |date=2006 |pages=128–130 |isbn=9780807857670}}</ref>

Of much more lasting impact was the story ''Gone with the Wind'', first in the form of [[Gone with the Wind (novel)|the best-selling 1936 novel]], which enabled its author [[Margaret Mitchell]] to win the [[Pulitzer Prize]], and an award-winning [[Gone with the Wind (film)|Hollywood blockbuster with the same title]] in 1939. In each case, the second half of the story focuses on Reconstruction in Atlanta. The book sold millions of copies nationwide; the film is regularly re-broadcast on television. In 2018, it remained at the top of the [[list of highest-grossing films]], adjusted in order to keep up with inflation. The ''New Georgia Encyclopedia'' argues:<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |first1=Hugh |last1=Ruppersburg |first2=Chris |last2=Dobbs |title=''Gone With the Wind'' (Film) |url= https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/gone-wind-film |encyclopedia=New Georgia Encyclopedia |date=2017}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=Politically, the film offers a conservative view of Georgia and the South. In her novel, despite her Southern prejudices, Mitchell showed clear awareness of the shortcomings of her characters and their region. The film is less analytical. It portrays the story from a clearly Old South point of view: the South is presented as a great civilization, the practice of slavery is never questioned, and the plight of the freedmen after the Civil War is implicitly blamed on their emancipation. A series of scenes whose racism rivals that of D. W. Griffith's film ''The Birth of a Nation'' (1915) mainly portrays Reconstruction as a time when Southern whites were victimized by freed slaves, who themselves were exploited by Northern carpetbaggers.}}

=== In education ===
The "[[Dunning School]]" dominated white scholarship about Reconstruction during most of the 20th century. Black scholarship on the Reconstruction era was mostly ignored until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, though the racist interpretations of the Dunning School continue to this day.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Greene |first=Robert II |date=2019-08-13 |title=Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the Long Arc of Reconstruction |url=https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/henry-louis-gates-jr-and-the-long-arc-of-reconstruction/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220308184045/https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/henry-louis-gates-jr-and-the-long-arc-of-reconstruction/ |archive-date=March 8, 2022 |access-date=2022-03-08 |journal=The Nation |issn=0027-8378}}</ref>

Historian [[Eric Foner]] said, "for no other period of American history does so wide a gap exist between current scholarship and popular historical understanding, which, judging from references to Reconstruction in recent newspaper articles, films, popular books, and in public monuments across the country, still bears the mark of the old Dunning School."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Foner |first=Eric |date=2016 |title="Epilogue" in The Reconstruction Era: Official National Park Service Handbook |journal=Eastern National Publishing}}</ref>

As reported in a January 2022 ''Time'' magazine article:<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Waxman |first=Olivia B. |date=January 12, 2022 |title=Why It Matters That U.S. Schools Are Failing to Teach the Reconstruction Period |url=https://time.com/6128421/teaching-reconstruction-study/ |access-date=2022-03-08 |magazine=Time}}</ref><blockquote>In social studies standards for 45 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia, discussion of Reconstruction is "partial" or "non-existent", according to historians who reviewed how the period is discussed in K-12 social studies standards for public schools nationwide. In a report produced by the education nonprofit Zinn Education Project, the study's authors say they are concerned that American children will grow up to be uninformed about a critical period of history that helps explain why full racial equality remains unfulfilled today.</blockquote>The Zinn Education Project's report, ''Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction'',<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Rosado |first1=Ana |last2=Cohn-Postar |first2=Gideon |last3=Eisen |first3=Mimi |date=2022 |title=Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction |url=https://www.teachreconstructionreport.org/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220308184047/https://www.teachreconstructionreport.org/ |archive-date=March 8, 2022 |access-date=2022-03-08 |website=Teach Reconstruction Report}}</ref> highlights the historical connections to Reconstruction that surround us today and examines Reconstruction's place in state social studies standards across the United States and the barriers to teaching effective Reconstruction history.

According to a ''[[Facing South]]'' article entitled "The South's schools are failing to teach accurate Reconstruction history":<ref>{{Cite web |last=Barber |first=Benjamin |date=2022-02-17 |title=The South's schools are failing to teach accurate Reconstruction history |url=https://www.facingsouth.org/2022/02/souths-schools-are-failing-teach-accurate-reconstruction-history |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220308184055/https://www.facingsouth.org/2022/02/souths-schools-are-failing-teach-accurate-reconstruction-history |archive-date=March 8, 2022 |access-date=2022-03-08 |website=Facing South}}</ref><blockquote>"It is our hope that states and districts will adopt these guidelines for their own educational standards, curricula, and professional development," the report states. "In so doing, they will be better equipped to teach students the true history of Reconstruction, help students understand its significance and make connections to the present day. And they will empower teachers to educate their students and themselves about ongoing Reconstruction scholarship."</blockquote>

==See also==
* [[African American founding fathers of the United States]]
* [[Reconstruction Era National Monument]]
* [[Remembering Reconstruction: Struggles over the Meaning of America's Most Turbulent Era]]
* [[Freedmen's town]]

==References==
===Notes===
{{Reflist|group=lower-roman|30em}}

=== Citations ===
{{Reflist|24em}}

==Bibliography==
{{Main|Bibliography of the Reconstruction era}}
{{Refbegin}}

===Scholarly secondary sources===
{{Div col}}
* {{cite book |last=Anderson |first=James D. |title=The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 |year=1988 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |title-link=The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935}}
* {{cite book |last=Barney |first=William L. |title=Passage of the Republic: An Interdisciplinary History of Nineteenth Century America |year=1987 |publisher=D. C. Heath |isbn=0-669-04758-9}}
* {{cite journal |last=Blair |first=William |date=2005 |title=The use of military force to protect the gains of reconstruction |journal=Civil War History |volume=51 |issue=4 |pages=388–402 |doi=10.1353/cwh.2005.0055 |s2cid=144025738}}
* {{cite book |last=Blum |first=Edward J. |title=Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865–1898 |year=2005}}
* {{cite book |last=Bradley |first=Mark L. |title=Bluecoats and Tar Heels: Soldiers and Civilians in Reconstruction North Carolina |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-8131-2507-7}}
* {{cite book |last=Brands |first=H. W. |author-link=H.W. Brands |title=The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses S. Grant in War and Peace |publisher=Doubleday |location=New York |year=2012 |isbn=978-0-385-53241-9 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fGn2t-tuQBMC |url-access=registration}}
* {{cite book |editor-last=Brown |editor-first=Thomas J. |title=Reconstructions: New Perspectives on the Postbellum United States |date=2008}}
* {{cite book |last=Calhoun |first=Charles W. |title=The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant |author-link=Charles W. Calhoun |publisher=University Press of Kansas |location=Lawrence |year=2017 |isbn=978-0-7006-2484-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KWXdswEACAAJ}} scholarly review and response by Calhoun at {{doi|10.14296/RiH/2014/2270}}
* {{cite book |last=Chernow |first=Ron |author-link=Ron Chernow |title=Grant |publisher=Penguin Press |location=New York |year=2017 |isbn=978-1-59420-487-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wRYcDgAAQBAJ}}
* Cimbala, Paul, and Randall Miller, eds. ''The Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction'' (Fordham UP, 2020). https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823296828
* {{Cite book |last1=Cimbala |first1=Paul Alan |last2=Miller |first2=Randall M. |last3=Simpson |first3=Brooks D. |title=An Uncommon Time: The Civil War and the Northern Home Front |url=https://archive.org/details/uncommontimecivi00paul |url-access=registration |publisher=Fordham University Press |date=2002 |isbn=978-0-8232-2195-0}}
* {{cite book |last1=Donald |first1=David Herbert|author1-link=David Herbert Donald |last2=Baker |first2=Jean H.|author2-link=Jean H. Baker |last3=Holt |first3=Michael F. |title=The Civil War and Reconstruction |place=New York |publisher=Norton |year=2001 |isbn=978-0393974270 |oclc=247969097}}
* {{cite book |last=Downs |first=Gregory P. |title=After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War |place=Cambridge, MA |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2015}}
* {{Cite book |last=Downs |first=Jim |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h8u7q5CB9yYC |title=Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2012 |isbn=9780199758722 |location=New York |via=Google Books}}
* {{cite book |last=Doyle |first=Don H. |author-link=Don H. Doyle |title=The Age of Reconstruction: How Lincoln's New Birth of Freedom Remade the World |place=Princeton & Oxford |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=2024}}
* {{cite book |title=The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America's Most Progressive Era |last=Egerton |first=Douglas |publisher=Bloomsbury Press |date=2014 |isbn=978-1-60819-566-4}}
* {{cite book |last=Foner |first=Eric |author-link=Eric Foner |title=Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and its Legacy |url=https://archive.org/details/nothingbutfreedo00fone/page/40/mode/2up |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |location=Baton Rouge |date=1983 |pages=39–40 |isbn=978-0-8071-1118-5 |oclc=422767493 |lccn=83007906 |edition=1st |language=en |format=pdf |access-date=February 14, 2025 |url-access=registration }}
* {{Cite book |last=Foner |first=Eric |title=A Short History of Reconstruction |date=1990 |publisher=Harper Perennial |isbn=9780060964313 |location=New York}}
* {{cite book |last1=Foner |first1=Eric |last2=Mahoney |first2=Olivia |title=America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War |date=June 1997 |publisher=LSU Press |isbn=0-8071-2234-3}}
* {{cite book |author-link=Eric Foner |last=Foner |first=Eric |title=Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 |date=1988 |location=New York |publisher=Harper & Row |isbn=0-06-015851-4 |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780060158514}} Pulitzer-prize winning history, and most detailed synthesis of original and previous scholarship.
* {{cite book |author-link=Eric Foner |last=Foner |first=Eric |title=Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction |year=2005}}
* {{cite book |author-link=Eric Foner |last=Foner |first=Eric |title=Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 |orig-date=1988 |date=2014b |location=New York |publisher=Harper Perennial |edition=updated |isbn=978-0-06-235451-8}}
* {{cite book |author-link=Eric Foner |last=Foner |first=Eric |title=The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution |date=2019 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. |location=New York |isbn=978-0-393-35852-0}}
* {{cite book |last=Franklin |first=John Hope |title=Reconstruction After the Civil War |year=1961 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=0-226-26079-8}}
* Gates Jr, Henry Louis. ''Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow'' (Penguin, 2020) [https://books.google.com/books?id=M2QOEAAAQBAJ&dq=reconstruction+us+history&pg=PR13 online]; see also [https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/130.OWA_db8iuz71.pdf online book review].
* {{Cite book |last=Guelzo |first=Allen C. |title=Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President |year=1999 |publisher=W.B. Eerdmans |isbn=978-0802838728 |url=https://archive.org/details/abrahamlincolnre00guel |url-access=limited}} 2nd ed. (2022).
* {{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MOFHPTQYqzgC |title=Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America |last=Guelzo |first=Allen C. |publisher=Simon & Schuster Paperbacks |date=2004 |location=New York |isbn=978-1-4165-4795-2}}
* {{cite book |last=Guelzo |first=Allen C. |year=2018 |title=Reconstruction: A Concise History |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0190865696 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0hBQDwAAQBAJ |access-date=March 19, 2023 |archive-date=April 7, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230407004447/https://books.google.com/books?id=0hBQDwAAQBAJ |url-status=live}}
* {{cite book |last=Harris |first=William C. |title=With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union |year=1997}} Portrays Lincoln as opponent of Radicals.
* {{Cite book |last1=Holzer |first1=Harold |last2=Medford |first2=Edna Greene |last3=Williams |first3=Frank J. |title=The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views (Social, Political, Iconographic) |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |date=2006 |isbn=978-0-8071-3144-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZaB5NiiIKMcC}}
* {{cite book |last=Hubbs |first=G. Ward |title=Searching for Freedom after the Civil War: Klansman, Carpetbagger, Scalawg, and Freedman |place=Tuscaloosa |publisher=University of Alabama Press |year=2015}}
* {{cite book |last=Hunter |first=Tera W. |year=1997 |title=To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, MA |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780674893092 |url-access=registration}}
* {{cite book |last=Jenkins |first=Wilbert L. |title=Climbing up to Glory: A Short History of African Americans During the Civil War and Reconstruction |year=2002}}
* {{cite book |last=Jones |first=Jacqueline |title=Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present |year=2010 |publisher=Basic Books |location=New York}}
* {{cite journal |last=Kaczorowski |first=Robert J. |title=Federal Enforcement of Civil Rights During the First Reconstruction |url=http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1591&context=ulj |year=1995 |journal=Fordham Urban Law Journal |volume=23 |issue=1 |pages=155–186 |issn=2163-5978 |access-date=March 26, 2016 |archive-date=March 4, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304120425/http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1591&context=ulj |url-status=live}}
* {{cite book |last=Kahan |first=Paul |year=2018 |title=The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant: Preserving the Civil War's Legacy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=It1BvgAACAAJ |publisher=Westholme Publishing |isbn=978-1-59416-273-2}}
* Kutler, Stanley I. ''Judicial power and Reconstruction politics'' (University of Chicago Press, 2022). [https://books.google.com/books?id=mzBsEAAAQBAJ&dq=reconstruction+us+history&pg=PP1 online]
* {{Cite book |last=Lemann |first=Nicholas |title=Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War |date=2007 |publisher=Farrar, Straus & Giroux |isbn=9780374530693 |location=New York |pages=15–21 |author-link=Nicholas Lemann}}
* {{cite journal |last=Logan |first=Trevon D. |date=2020 |title=Do Black Politicians Matter? Evidence from Reconstruction |journal=Journal of Economic History |volume=80 |issue=1 |pages=1–37 |doi=10.1017/S0022050719000755 |s2cid=219136609 |doi-access=free}}
* [[Staughton Lynd|Lynd, Staughton]], ed. (1967). ''Reconstruction''. New York, Evanston, and London: Harper & Row, Publishers.

* {{Cite book |title=Responses of the Presidents to Charges of Misconduct |last=McFeely |first=William S. |publisher=Delacorte Press |date=1974 |isbn=978-0-440-05923-3 |location=New York |editor-first=C. Vann |editor-last=Woodward}}
* {{cite book |last=McFeely |first=William S. |author-link=William S. McFeely |title=Grant: A Biography |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |location=New York City |year=2002 |orig-date=1981 |isbn=978-0-393-01372-6 |oclc=6889578 |url=https://archive.org/details/grantbiography00mcfe}} <!-- added for page numbers referencing this edition -->
* {{cite book |last=McPherson |first=James M. |author-link=James M. McPherson |year=1992 |title=Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-507606-6}}
* {{cite book |last1=McPherson |first1=James M. |last2=Hogue |first2=James |title=Ordeal By Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction |year=2009}}
* {{cite book |last=Milton |first=George Fort |title=The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals |year=1930 |postscript=; from Dunning School.}}
* {{cite journal |last=Morrow |first=Ralph E. |title=Northern Methodism in the South during Reconstruction |journal=Mississippi Valley Historical Review |date=1954 |volume=41 |issue=2 |pages=197–218 |doi=10.2307/1895802 |jstor=1895802}}
* {{cite book |last=Oberholtzer |first=Ellis Paxson |title=A History of the United States Since the Civil War: 1865–68. Vol. 1 |year=1917}}
* {{cite book |last1=Osborne |first1=John M. |last2=Bombaro |first2=Christine |title=Forgotten Abolitionist: John A. J. Creswell of Maryland |publisher=Dickinson College |location=Carlisle, Pennsylvania |isbn=9780996932103 |date=2015}}
* {{cite book |last=Patrick |first=Rembert |title=The Reconstruction of the Nation |year=1967 |place=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |url=https://archive.org/details/reconstructionof00patr}}
* {{cite book |last=Patton |first=James Welch |date=1934 |title=Unionism and Reconstruction in Tennessee, 1860–1869 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press}}
* {{cite book |last=Perman |first=Michael |title=The Road to Redemption: Southern Politics, 1869–1879 |place=Chapel Hill |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |year=1985 |isbn=978-0807841419}}
* {{cite book |last=Perman |first=Michael |title=Emancipation and Reconstruction |year=2003}}
* {{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D_FjY_ARcGoC |title=Lincoln in American Memory |last=Peterson |first=Merrill D. |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=1994 |location=New York |isbn=978-0-19-802304-3}}
* {{cite book |last1=Randall |first1=J. G. |last2=Donald |first2=David |title=The Civil War and Reconstruction [Second Edition] |publisher=Pickle Partners Publishing |year=2016 |isbn=978-1787200272 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JoHjDAAAQBAJ}}
* {{cite book |first=William L. |last=Richter |title=A to Z of the Civil War and Reconstruction |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Fa2_G9yaX38C |date=2009 |publisher=[[Scarecrow Press]] |isbn=978-0-8108-6336-1}}
* {{cite book |last=Rhodes |first=James F. |year=1920 |title=History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley–Bryan Campaign of 1896}}  Highly detailed narrative by Pulitzer Prize winner; argues was a political disaster because it violated the rights of White Southerners.
** [https://archive.org/details/historyunitedst07rhodgoog Volume: 6: 1865–72] (via Google Books)
** [https://archive.org/details/historyunitedst05rhodgoog Volume: 7: 1877] (via Google Books)
* {{cite book |last=Simon |first=John Y. |author-link=John Y. Simon |chapter=Ulysses S. Grant |editor-last=Graff |editor-first=Henry |title=The Presidents: A Reference History |edition=7th |year=2002 |pages=245–260 |publisher=Macmillan Library Reference USA |isbn=0-684-80551-0}}
* {{cite book |last=Simpson |first=Brooks D. |author-link=Brooks D. Simpson |year=2009 |title=The Reconstruction Presidents |edition=2nd |location=Lawrence, Kansas |publisher=University Press of Kansas}}
* {{Cite book |last=Sinha |first=Manisha |author-link=Manisha Sinha |title=The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860–1920 |publisher=[[Liveright Publishing]] |year=2024 |isbn=978-1-63149-844-2}}
* {{cite book |last=Smith |first=Jean Edward |author-link=Jean Edward Smith |title=Grant |publisher=Simon & Schuster |location=New York |year=2001 |isbn=0-684-84927-5 |url=https://archive.org/details/grant00smit |url-access=registration}}
* {{cite book |last=Stampp |first=Kenneth M. |author-link=Kenneth M. Stampp |title=The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877 |year=1965 |place=New York |publisher=Vintage Books |postscript=; short survey; rejects Dunning School analysis. |url=https://archive.org/details/eraofreconstruct00stam}}
* {{cite book |last=Stauffer |first=John |author-link=John Stauffer (professor) |year=2008 |title=Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass & Abraham Lincoln |location=New York |publisher=Twelve}}
* Stewart, Megan A., and Karin E. Kitchens. "Social transformation and violence: Evidence from US Reconstruction." ''Comparative Political Studies'' 54.11 (2021): 1939–1983. [https://www.zbw.eu/econis-archiv/bitstream/11159/375029/1/EBP075922525_0.pdf online]
* {{cite book |last=Stover |first=John F. |date=1955 |title=The Railroads of the South, 1865–1900: A Study in Finance and Control |publisher=University of North Carolina Press}}
* {{cite book |last=Stowell |first=Daniel W. |title=Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863–1877 |year=1998 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-802621-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jQphbo640wAC}}
* {{cite book |last=Summers |first=Mark Wahlgren |title=A Dangerous Stir: Fear, Paranoia, and the Making of Reconstruction |year=2009}} [https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Stir-Paranoia-Reconstruction-America/dp/0807833045/ excerpt and text search] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170307235440/https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Stir-Paranoia-Reconstruction-America/dp/0807833045 |date=March 7, 2017 }}
* {{cite book |last=Summers |first=Mark Wahlgren |title=The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction |year=2014 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-1-4696-1757-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2-1wBAAAQBAJ}} [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1469617579/ text search] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210320015239/https://www.amazon.com/dp/1469617579 |date=March 20, 2021}}
* {{cite book |last=Summers |first=Mark Wahlgren |title=Railroads, Reconstruction, and the Gospel of Prosperity: Aid Under the Radical Republicans, 1865–1877 |year=2014a |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-61282-9}}
* {{cite journal |last=Sweet |first=William W. |date=1914 |title=The Methodist Episcopal Church and Reconstruction |journal=Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society |volume=7 |issue=3 |pages=147–165 |jstor=40194198 |jstor-access=free}}
* {{cite book |last=Trefousse |first=Hans L. |author-link=Hans L. Trefousse |year=1989 |title=Andrew Johnson: A Biography |location=New York |publisher=W.W. Norton & Co.}}
* {{Cite book |last1=Wagner |first1=Margaret E. |last2=Gallagher |first2=Gary W. |author2-link=Gary W. Gallagher |last3=McPherson |first3=James M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7svFnyOLknUC |title=The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster Paperbacks |date=2002 |isbn=978-1-4391-4884-6}}
* {{cite book |last=Wang |first=Xi |title=The Trial of Democracy: Black Suffrage and Northern Republicans, 1860–1910 |publisher=The University of Georgia Press |location=Athens |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-8203-4206-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5Rn8AAAAQBAJ}}
* {{cite book |title=The Republic for Which It Stands |title-link=The Republic for Which It Stands |last=White |first=Richard| author-link=Richard White (historian)|year=2017 |publisher=Oxford University Press}}
* {{cite book |title=American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant |last=White |first=Ronald C. |author-link=Ronald C. White |publisher=Random House Publishing |year=2016 |isbn=978-1-58836-992-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TPNRCwAAQBAJ}}
* {{cite journal |last=Williams |first=T. Harry |author-link=T. Harry Williams |title=An Analysis of Some Reconstruction Attitudes |journal=Journal of Southern History |volume=12 |issue=4 |date=November 1946 |pages=469–486 |doi=10.2307/2197687 |jstor=2197687}}
* {{Cite book |last=Woodward |first=C. Vann |author-link=C. Vann Woodward |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=azoAk_r9cP8C |title=Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=1966 |isbn=978-0-19-506423-0}}
* {{cite book |editor-last=Zuczek |editor-first=Richard |title=Encyclopedia of the Reconstruction Era |year=2006}} (2 vols.)
{{Div col end}}

===Historiography===
{{Div col}}
* {{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l7PtAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT21 |title=Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–18 |edition=Updated |isbn=978-0062383235 |last=Foner |first=Eric |date=2014a |chapter=Introduction to the 2014 Anniversary Edition |publisher=Harper Collins}}
* Ford, Lacy K., ed. ''A Companion to the Civil War and Reconstruction''. Blackwell (2005) 518 pp.
* Frantz, Edward O., ed. ''A Companion to the Reconstruction Presidents 1865–1881'' (2014). 30 essays by scholars.
* {{Cite journal |last=Parfait |first=Claire |date=2009 |title=Reconstruction Reconsidered: A Historiography of Reconstruction, from the Late Nineteenth Century to the 1960s |url=https://www.cairn.info/revue-etudes-anglaises-2009-4-page-440.htm?contenu=article |journal=Études anglaises |volume=62 |issue=4 |pages=440–454 |doi=10.3917/etan.624.0440 |via=Cairn Info |access-date=January 18, 2022 |archive-date=January 18, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220118182805/https://www.cairn.info/revue-etudes-anglaises-2009-4-page-440.htm?contenu=article |url-status=live|url-access=subscription }}
* Perman, Michael and Amy Murrell Taylor, eds. ''Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction: Documents and Essays'' (2010)
* {{Cite book |last=Richardson |first=Heather Cox |author-link=Heather Cox Richardson |title=A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era |publisher=[[John Wiley & Sons]] |year=2017 |isbn=9781118913963 |editor-last=Nichols |editor-first=Christopher McKnight |editor-link=Christopher McKnight Nichols |series=Wiley Blackwell Companions to American History |pages=5–20 |chapter=Reconstructing the Gilded Age and Progressive Era |doi=10.1002/9781118913994.ch1 |editor-last2=Unger |editor-first2=Nancy |editor-link2=Nancy C. Unger}}
* {{cite journal |last=Simpson |first=Brooks D. |doi=10.1353/cwe.2016.0003 |title=Mission Impossible: Reconstruction Policy Reconsidered |journal=The Journal of the Civil War Era |volume=6 |pages=85–102 |date=2016 |s2cid=155789816}}
* {{cite journal |last=Smith |first=Stacey L. |doi=10.1353/cwe.2016.0073 |title=Beyond North and South: Putting the West in the Civil War and Reconstruction |journal=The Journal of the Civil War Era |volume=6 |issue=4 |pages=566–591 |date=November 3, 2016 |s2cid=164313047}}
* {{cite book |editor-last=Stalcup |editor-first=Brenda |title=Reconstruction: Opposing Viewpoints |publisher=Greenhaven Press |year=1995}} Uses primary documents to present opposing viewpoints.
* {{cite book |editor-last1=Stampp |editor-first1=Kenneth M. |editor-last2=Litwack |editor-first2=Leon F. |title=Reconstruction: An Anthology of Revisionist Writings |year=1969}} Essays by scholars.
{{Div col end}}

===Yearbooks===
{{Div col}}
* [https://archive.org/stream/appletonsannualc07newyuoft#page/n7/mode/2up ''Appleton's American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1867''] (highly detailed compendium of facts and primary sources; details on every U.S. state & the national government)
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=maIoAAAAYAAJ ''Appleton's American Annual Cyclopedia... for 1868''] (1873)
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=ZyMVAAAAYAAJ ''Appleton's American Annual Cyclopedia... for 1869''] (1869)
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=LJ4YAAAAIAAJ ''Appleton's American Annual Cyclopedia... for 1870''] (1871)
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=Jp8YAAAAIAAJ ''Appleton's American Annual Cyclopedia... for 1872''] (1873)
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=c6QoAAAAYAAJ ''Appleton's American Annual Cyclopedia... for 1873''] (1879)
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=2WcMAAAAYAAJ ''Appleton's American Annual Cyclopedia... for 1875''] (1876)
* [https://archive.org/details/newappletonsannu01newyuoft ''Appleton's American Annual Cyclopedia... for 1876''] (1877)
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=Do4EAAAAYAAJ ''Appleton's American Annual Cyclopedia... for 1877''] (1878)
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=dhhesoIKZS4C&pg=PA265 ''The American year-book and national register for 1869'' (1869) online]
{{Div col end}}

===Primary sources===
{{Div col}}
* [[Ira Berlin|Berlin, Ira]], ed. ''Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867'' (1982), 970 pp. of archival documents; also ''Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War'' ed by Ira Berlin, [[Barbara J. Fields]], and Steven F. Miller (1993).
* {{cite book |author-link=Walter L. Fleming |last=Fleming |first=Walter L. |title=Documentary History of Reconstruction: Political, Military, Social, Religious, Educational, and Industrial |year=1906–1907}} 2 vols. Presents a broad collection of primary sources; Vol. 1: On National Politics; [https://books.google.com/books?id=1OoLAAAAIAAJ Vol. 2: On States] (via Google Books).
* Hyman, Harold M., ed. ''The Radical Republicans and Reconstruction, 1861–1870'' (1967), collection of long political speeches and pamphlets.
* {{cite book |last=Lynch |first=John R. |title=The Facts of Reconstruction |place=New York |publisher=The Neale Publishing Company |year=1913 |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16158/16158-h/16158-h.htm |access-date=May 14, 2006 |archive-date=January 13, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200113105047/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16158/16158-h/16158-h.htm |url-status=live}} One of the first Black congressmen during Reconstruction.
* {{cite book |last=McPherson |first=Edward |author-link=Edward McPherson |title=The Political History of the United States of America During the Period of Reconstruction |year=1875 |publisher=Solomons & Chapman |url=https://archive.org/details/politicalhistor03mcphgoog}} large collection of speeches and primary documents, 1865–1870, complete text online. [The copyright has expired.]
* Palmer, Beverly Wilson; Byers Ochoa, Holly; eds. ''The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens'' 2 vols. (1998), 900&nbsp;pp; his speeches plus and letters to and from Stevens.
* Palmer, Beverly Wilson, ed. ''The Selected Letters of Charles Sumner'', 2 vols. (1990); Vol. 2 covers 1859–1874.
* {{cite web |last1=Peters |first1=Gerhard |last2=Woolley |first2=John T. |title=1868 Democratic Party Platform |url=http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29579 |url-status=dead |publisher=The American Presidency Project |year=2018b |access-date=January 4, 2021 |archive-date=August 3, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150803193830/http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29579}}
* [[James Shepherd Pike|Pike, James Shepherd]] [http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;idno=AFK4119.0001.001 ''The prostrate state: South Carolina under negro government'' (1874)]
* [[Whitelaw Reid|Reid, Whitelaw]] [http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;idno=AFJ8942.0001.001 ''After the War: A Southern Tour, May 1, 1865 to May 1, 1866''] (1866). By Republican editor.
* Smith, John David, ed. ''We Ask Only for Even-Handed Justice: Black Voices from Reconstruction, 1865–1877'' (University of Massachusetts Press, 2014). xviii, 133 pp.
* Sumner, Charles [http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0012-69 'Our Domestic Relations: or, How to Treat the Rebel States' ''Atlantic Monthly'' September 1863] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020725084411/http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0012-69 |date=July 25, 2002 }}, early abolitionist manifesto.
{{Div col end}}
{{Refend}}

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
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* [https://www.nps.gov/reer/index.htm/ Reconstruction Era National Historical Park] From [[Reconstruction Era National Historical Park|The National Park Service]]
* [https://www.nps.gov/subjects/reconstruction/index.htm The Reconstruction Era National Historical Network]
* [http://zinnedproject.org/news/kidada-williams-on-i-saw-death-coming/ Kidada Williams on ''I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction''], from the Teach the Black Freedom Struggle online series.
* Behn, Richard J., ed. [2002] 2020. [http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=60&subjectID=3 "Reconstruction"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150921231649/http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=60&subjectID=3 |date=September 21, 2015 }}. ''Mr. Lincoln and Freedom''. [[The Lehrman Institute]].
* Bragg, William Harris. [2005] 2019. [https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/reconstruction-georgia "Reconstruction in Georgia"]. ''[[New Georgia Encyclopedia]]''.
* Eisen, Mimi and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca. "[https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/reconstructing-the-south-what-really-happened/ Reconstructing the South: What Really Happened]." ''The Zinn Education Project.''
* Green Jr., Robert P. 1991. [http://www.alaskool.org/resources/teaching/socialstudies/Reconstruct_historiography.htm "Reconstruction Historiography: A Source of Teaching Ideas"]. ''The Social Studies'' (July/August): 153–157.
* Mabry, Donald J. 2006. [https://web.archive.org/web/20060507205729/http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=587 "Reconstruction in Mississippi"]. ''The Historical Text Archive''.
* [[William H. Seward|Seward, William H.]] 1866. [http://www.bartleby.com/43/42.html "Proclamation Declaring the Insurrection at an End"]. ''American Historical Documents, 1000–1904'', ([[Harvard Classics#Vol. 43. AMERICAN HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS|''The Harvard Classics'' 43]]).
* Smith, Llewellyn M., dir. 2004. [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/reconstruction/#film_description "Reconstruction: The Second Civil War"], ''[[American Experience]]''. [[PBS]]. Film connecting the replacement of civil rights with segregation and disenfranchisement at the end of 19th-century during the [[Jim Crow laws|Jim Crow era]].
** [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reconstruction/activism/sf_rights.html "Civil Rights During Reconstruction"] – Historians Eric Foner, David W. Blight and Edward Ayers discuss "Civil Rights During Reconstruction".
* [http://www.history.com/topics/reconstruction "Reconstruction: Era and Definition"]. ''[[History (American TV network)|The History Channel]]''. [[A&E Networks]].
* [http://histclo.com/essay/war/cwa/recon.html "The Civil War: Reconstruction"]. [2002] 2015. – This is part of an extensive assessment of the Civil War and slavery, which gives particular attention to children.
* [http://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-119#overview "The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845–1877"] [HIST 119]. ''[[Open Yale Courses]]''. New Haven, Connecticut: [[Yale University]]. Full semester course in text/audio/video; materials free under the [[Creative Commons]] license.
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