The Reconstruction Era was the period after the American Civil War (1861-1865), when the question arose whether the Confederate States of America had definitively left the Union upon their secession. The newly freed slaved became citizens civil rights. The north had conquered the south in the war and that meant they could treat the south as a foreign power.

President Abraham Lincoln was a strong supporter of the reconstruction of the union. He was not given a change, when he was shot five days after the South’s capitulation. After the assassination, his successor, President Andrew Johnson, was in favor of a moderate course towards the south. President Johnson, a democrat and former slaveholder, favored measures to bring the South back into Union. This led to tension with the Congress. Radical Republicans sought stronger federal measures to upgrade the rights of African Americans.

Outbreaks of violence against Blacks in the South followed in 1866, including the Memphis Riots and the New Orleans massacre. The elections of 1866 gave Republicans the majority, enabling them to pass the 14^th Amendment, federalizing equal rights for freedmen. In nearly alle the Southern states, Republican coalitions came to power setting up a free-labor economy, using the U.S. Army and the Freedmen’s Bureau. The Bureau protected the legal rights of freedmen, setting up labor contracts and schools and churches for them. Thousands of Northerners came to the south as missionaries and teachers to aid the reconstruction in the south.

Four acts of Reconstruction were passed in 1867. It stipulated that the southern states would be divided into five zones of occupation until the equality of the black population was accepted. President Johnson vetoed every time, but Congress, dominated by Republicans, always found a two-thirds majority to overthrow his veto. Congress limited the president’s resources. The dismissal of officials and the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court were opposed. An impeachment procedure was the result. Johnson had to retire at the end of his term in 1869. The new national Reconstruction laws, like the right to vote for freedmen, incensed White supremacists in the South, giving rise to the Ku Klux Lan. The Klan murdered Republicans and outspoken freedmen in the South during the period 1867 to 1869.

After the election, Johnson was replaced by President Ulysses S. Grant, general and civil war hero, who acted in full congressional terms. Grant used the Enforcement Acts to combat the Ku Klux Klan, which was essentially wiped out in 1872. Grant’s policies included federal integration, equal rights, black immigration, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1875.

In 1877, presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes made an agreement with Southern Democratic electors. If they supported him in becoming president, he would withdraw federal troops from the south and end the Reconstruction. This happened and within a few years all measures of the Reconstruction had been reversed. Equality between white and black was removed, although this was in violation of state and federal constitutions. A segregation system was put in place with the Jim Crow laws. Not until the 1950s to 1970s would the South receive equal civil rights for white and black.