The Reconstruction Period

The Reconstruction implemented by Congress, which lasted from 1866 to 1877, was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War, providing the means for readmitting them into the Union, and defining the means by which whites and blacks could live together in a nonslave society. The South, however, saw Reconstruction as a humiliating, even vengeful imposition and did not welcome it.

During the years after the war, black and white teachers from the North and South, missionary organizations, churches and schools worked tirelessly to give the emancipated population the opportunity to learn. Former slaves of every age took advantage of the opportunity to become literate. Grandfathers and their grandchildren sat together in classrooms seeking to obtain the tools of freedom.

After the Civil War, with the protection of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, African Americans enjoyed a period when they were allowed to vote, actively participate in the political process, acquire the land of former owners, seek their own employment, and use public accommodations. Opponents of this progress, however, soon rallied against the former slaves' freedom and began to find means for eroding the gains for which many had shed their blood.

The constitutional amendments and legislative reforms that laid the foundation for the most radical phase of Reconstruction were enacted from 1865 until 1870.

By the 1870s Reconstruction had made some progress to provide the former slaves with equal rights under the law, including the right to vote, and with education to achieve literacy. During Reconstruction, most states in the South established public education, although funding was variable. However, much of the initial progress towards equal rights was rolled back between 1873 and 1877, when conservative whites (calling themselves "Redeemers") took power throughout the former Confederacy. In 1877 President Rutherford Hayes withdrew federal troops, causing the collapse of the remaining three Republican state governments. Through the enactment of Jim Crow laws and through extralegal means, the Redeemers subsequently enforced a system of racial segregation which stayed in place throughout the South into the 1960s.

During the Civil War, Republican leaders agreed that slavery and the Slave Power had to be permanently destroyed, and that all forms of Confederate nationalism had to be suppressed. Moderates said this could be easily accomplished as soon as Confederate armies surrendered and the Southern states repealed secession and ratified the 13th Amendment—all of which happened by September 1865.