Us History Reconstruction Period

AP

United States

History

By Jackie Cortes

Summer Assignment

2013-14

The reconstruction era was a time that was approximately ten to twelve years long, it took place in the years 1865-1877; this era took place shortly after the civil war. This era held some of America’s most important events, as well as some of the most important people in the US history.

On April 14th 1865, John Wilkes Booth assassinated president Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s theater in Washington D.C. John Wilkes Booth was a well-known stage actor and a great supporter of the south. After President Lincoln’s death, vice president Andrew Johnson became the new president for the United States of America in its great time in change and need. Andrew Johnson was a former governor and a senator from Tennessee. President Abraham Lincoln had chosen Andrew Johnson as his running mate in the 1864 election in order to persuade the conservative Border States to remain a union. Johnson used President Abraham Lincoln’s Ten-Percent Plan to grant all southerners full pardons. New president Andrew Johnson approved the new state constitution as the time of the presidential reconstruction came to its end in December 1865. In 1866 the Civil Right Act that was passed and granted newly emancipated blacks the right to sue, the right to serve in juries, and several other legal rights. In 1866, the Ku Klux Klan came to rise. This group of individuals was meant to terrorize southern blacks and “keep them in their place.” In 1867 the first reconstruction acts divided the south into five conquered districts. The second reconstruction act put the military in charge of southern voter registrations. This year also held the 15th admedment, giving all of American men-including former slaves-the right to vote. In the year 1867, President Johnson was also impeached.

In the years that followed whites did everything in their power to limit all the rights to the freed slaves. The violence by the Ku Klux Klan became so...