The Reconstruction Era

After Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, large groups of African Americans, totaling nearly 180,000, had enlisted into the Union Army. Since the proclamation gave four million slaves their freedom, the South then had to begin to rebuild its economy and navigate new challenges.

Under Andrew Johnson's Presidential Reconstruction, all land that had been confiscated by the Union Army and distributed to the freed slaves was then returned to its prewar owners. Even though the southern states had to comply with the newly enforced 13th Amendment, their individual state governments were freely able to decide how to rebuild themselves. In response to this, in 1866 legislatures in the southern states passed the "black codes" which controlled the labor and behavior of African Americans, especially former slaves.  However, organizations such as the KKK eventually reversed these progressive changes and returned white supremacy to the South.

Later in 1866, the Republican Congress took over reconstruction in the South and in 1867 passed the Reconstruction Act. This act temporarily divided the South into five military districts and outlined how governments based on male universal sufferage were to be organized. The act also forced the South to ratify the 14th Amendment which extended the definition of citizenship to former slaves. Then in 1869, Congress approved the 15th Amendment which stated that a citizen's right to vote could not be denied on the grounds of race, color, or previous enslavement. By 1870, all former Confederate states were readmitted into the union, which led to the beginning of the end of the Reconstruction Era.

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