Reconstruction

the history of the United States, the term Reconstruction Era has two senses: the first covers the complete history of the entire U.S. from 1865–1877 following the Civil War; the second sense focuses on the transformation of the Southern United States from 1863 to 1877, as directed by Washington, with the reconstruction of state and society.

From 1863 to 1869, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson took a moderate position designed to bring the South back to normal as soon as possible, while the Radical Republicans (as they called themselves) used Congress to block the president, impose harsh terms, and upgrade the rights of the Freedmen (the ex-slaves). The president prevailed until the election of 1866, which enabled the Radicals to take control of policy, remove ex-Confederates from power, and enfranchise the Freedmen. A Republican coalition came to power in (nearly all) the southern states and set out to transform the society by setting up a free labor economy, with support from the Army and the Freedman's Bureau. The Radicals, upset at President Johnson's opposition to Congressional Reconstruction, filed impeachment charges but the action failed by one vote in the Senate. President Ulysses S. Grant supported Radical Reconstruction, using both the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. military to suppress white insurgency and support Republican reconstructed states. Conservative white Democrats, alleging widespread corruption, counterattacked and regained power in each state by 1877, often with violence. President Rutherford B. Hayes blocked conservative efforts to overturn Reconstruction legislation.

The deployment of the U.S. military was central to the establishment of Southern Reconstructed state governments and the suppression of violence against black and white voters.[1] Reconstruction was a remarkable chapter in the story of American freedom, but most historians consider it a failure because the region became a poverty-stricken backwater and...