Reconstruction generally refers to the period in United States history immediately

following the Civil War in which the federal government set the conditions that would allow
the rebellious Southern states back into the Union. (The precise starting point is
debatable, with some prominent scholars arguing that Reconstruction actually began during
the war.) In 1862, Abraham Lincoln had appointed provisional military governors to reestablish governments in Southern states recaptured by the Union Army. The main
condition for re-admittance was that at least 10 percent of the voting population in 1860
take an oath of allegiance to the Union. Aware that the Presidential plan omitted any
provision for social or economic reconstruction -- or black civil rights -- the anti-slavery
Congressmen in the Republican Party, known as the Radicals, criticized Lincoln's leniency.
The goal of reconstruction was to readmit the South on terms that were acceptable to the
north -- full political and civil equality for blacks and the denial of the political rights of
whites who were leaders of the secession movement. The Radicals wanted to insure that
newly freed blacks were protected and given their rights as Americans. After Lincoln's
assassination in April of 1865, President Andrew Johnson alienated Congress with his
Reconstruction policy. He supported white supremacy in the South and favored pro-Union
Southern political leaders who had aided the Confederacy once war had been declared.
Southerners, with Johnson's support, attempted to restore slavery in substance if not in
name. In 1866, Congress and President Johnson battled for control of Reconstruction. The
Congress won. Northern voters gave a smashing victory -- more than two-thirds of the
seats in Congress -- to the Radical Republicans in the 1866 congressional election, enabling
Congress to control Reconstruction and override any vetoes that Johnson might impose.
Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 that divided the Confederate states
(except for Tennessee, which had been re-admitted to the Union) into five military
districts. Each state was required to accept the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments
to the Constitution, which granted freedom and political rights of blacks.
Each Southern state had to incorporate these requirements into their constitutions, and
blacks were empowered with the vote. Yet Congress failed to secure land for blacks, thus
allowing whites to economically control blacks. The Freedmen's Bureau was authorized to
administer the new laws and help blacks attain their economic, civil, educational, and
political rights. The newly created state governments were generally Republican in
character and were governed by political coalitions of blacks, Northerners who had
migrated to the South (called "carpetbaggers" by Southern Democrats), and Southerners
who allied with the blacks and carpetbaggers (referred to as "scalawags" by their
opponents). This uneasy coalition of black and white Republicans passed significant civil
rights legislation in many states. Courts were reorganized, judicial procedures improved,
and public school systems established. Segregation existed but it was flexible. But as
blacks slowly progressed, white Southerners resented their achievements and their
empowerment, even though they were in a political minority in every state but South
Carolina.

Most whites rallied around the Democratic Party as the party of white supremacy.
Between 1868 and 1871, terrorist organizations, especially the Ku Klux Klan, murdered
blacks and whites who tried to exercise their right to vote or receive an education. The
Klan, working with Democrats in several states, used fraud and violence to help whites
regain control of their state governments. By the early 1870s, most Southern states had
been "redeemed" -- as many white Southerners called it -- from Republican rule. By the
time the last federal troops had been withdrawn in 1877, Reconstruction was all but over
and the Democratic Party controlled the destiny of the South.
-- Richard Wormser