Reconstruction Era

The Reconstruction Era was the period after the American Civil War in which the United States attempted to reintegrate the Southern states and define the status of formerly enslaved people. It began during the war with President Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan. After Lincoln's assassination, President Andrew Johnson's lenient policies were opposed by Radical Republicans in Congress, who passed the Reconstruction Acts, placed the South under military districts and approved three constitutional amendments: the Thirteenth abolished slavery, the Fourteenth granted citizenship and equal protection, and the Fifteenth protected the voting rights of Black men. Black citizens were elected to office, and the Freedmen's Bureau supported education. White supremacist violence, including that of the Ku Klux Klan, and the return of Democratic rule ended the experiment, and Jim Crow segregation followed.

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