Rebuilding the Union and redefining freedom, 1863 to 1877
The Civil War ended slavery for about four million people. It did not settle what their freedom would mean. Could freedpeople vote, own land, go to school, and be protected by the law? Who would decide, the president or Congress? And would the former Confederate states accept the answers?
For about a dozen years the country tried to answer those questions. Three amendments rewrote the Constitution, and Black men voted and held office across the South for the first time. Then a campaign of terror and a loss of Northern will brought it to an end. This page follows that story from Lincoln’s first plan to the Compromise of 1877, and looks ahead to the Jim Crow laws that followed.
The Plans
5 stages, in rough order. Each one changed what freedom meant in practice.
1863–64Lincoln vs. Congress
Two Plans
Reconstruction began before the war ended. In December 1863 Lincoln issued his Ten Percent Plan. When 10 percent of a state’s 1860 voters swore loyalty to the Union and accepted emancipation, the state could form a new government. Most Confederates would be pardoned.
Many Republicans in Congress thought this was too easy. The Wade-Davis Bill (1864) required a majority of white men to swear loyalty, and barred anyone who had willingly fought for the Confederacy from helping write new state constitutions. Lincoln let it die with a pocket veto. The argument over who controlled Reconstruction, the president or Congress, was just starting.
1865–66Presidential Reconstruction
Johnson’s Plan
After Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat, took charge. He pardoned most former Confederates and let Southern states rejoin quickly once they abolished slavery. He did nothing to protect the rights of freedpeople.
The new Southern legislatures passed Black Codes. They limited where Black people could live and work, forced them into yearly labor contracts, and let sheriffs arrest those without jobs as “vagrants” and hire them out. To many Northerners it looked like slavery under a new name. Congress refused to seat the Southern representatives and in 1866 passed the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment over Johnson’s opposition.
1867–68Congress takes over
Radical Reconstruction
The 1866 elections gave Republicans a veto-proof majority. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided ten Southern states into five military districts (Tennessee had already rejoined). To return, each state had to write a new constitution that let Black men vote and ratify the 14th Amendment.
When Johnson tried to block enforcement and fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the House impeached him in February 1868. The Senate fell one vote short of removing him, 35 to 19. Johnson finished his term with little power left.
1865–72Schools, contracts and limits
The Freedmen’s Bureau
Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in March 1865. It handed out food and medical care, helped reunite families separated by sale, and worked with Northern churches and Black communities to open schools. Thousands of schools were founded, and colleges such as Fisk and Howard date from these years.
The Bureau also supervised labor contracts between freedpeople and planters. That protected some workers from cheating, but it also pushed many back into field work for their former enslavers. The Bureau never had more than about 900 agents for the entire South (an estimate), and Congress shut down most of its work by 1869 and closed it in 1872.
1865A promise reversed
“Forty Acres”
In January 1865 General Sherman met with Black ministers in Savannah. Their spokesman, Garrison Frazier, said freedpeople wanted land of their own. Days later Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, reserving the Sea Islands and coastal rice lands from Charleston to Florida for Black families, in plots of up to 40 acres.
About 40,000 freedpeople settled on roughly 400,000 acres. In the fall of 1865, President Johnson ordered most of the land returned to its former owners. Without land, most freedpeople became sharecroppers, farming someone else’s land for a share of the crop and often sinking into debt.
The Reconstruction Amendments
Three amendments in five years. “Passed” is the date Congress sent each one to the states; “ratified” is the date enough states approved it.
Reconstruction Amendments: dates and purpose
Amendment
Passed by Congress
Ratified
What it did
13th Amendment
January 31, 1865
December 6, 1865
Abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, “except as a punishment for crime.”
14th Amendment
June 13, 1866
July 9, 1868
Made everyone born or naturalized in the U.S. a citizen; required “due process” and “equal protection of the laws” from the states.
15th Amendment
February 26, 1869
February 3, 1870
Barred denying the vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” It did not include women.
Black Officeholders
By historian Eric Foner’s estimate, about 2,000 Black men held public office in the South during Reconstruction, from local sheriffs and school board members to Congress. The number is an estimate because many local records are lost. Here are four of them.
Hiram R. Revels
Mississippi. A minister and teacher, in 1870 he took the Senate seat once held by Jefferson Davis, becoming the first Black U.S. senator.
Blanche K. Bruce
Mississippi. Born enslaved, he served in the Senate from 1875 to 1881, the first Black senator to serve a full term.
Robert Smalls
South Carolina. In 1862 he steered the Confederate ship Planter out of Charleston harbor to the Union fleet, freeing himself and his family. He later served five terms in Congress.
Joseph H. Rainey
South Carolina. In December 1870 he became the first Black member of the House of Representatives to be seated.
Who voted them in? Under the new state constitutions of 1867–68, Black men voted in large numbers. In South Carolina and Mississippi, Black residents were a majority of the population. Their governments created the first statewide public school systems in most Southern states, open to Black and white children, though usually in separate schools.
The Backlash
Content note. This section describes racial violence, including massacres. The facts are given plainly and without graphic detail.
Memphis and New Orleans, 1866
In May 1866, white mobs, including police, attacked Black neighborhoods in Memphis for three days. At least 46 Black people were killed and schools and churches burned. In July, police and a white mob attacked a mostly Black gathering at a political convention in New Orleans, killing about 34 Black people and 3 white Republicans (estimates vary). The riots helped convince Northern voters that Johnson’s plan had failed.
The Ku Klux Klan
Founded by Confederate veterans in Tennessee around 1866, the Klan and groups like it used beatings, arson and murder to stop Black people from voting and to drive out Republican officials, teachers and landowners.
The Enforcement Acts, 1870–71
Congress made it a federal crime to use force to block voting. The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 let President Grant suspend habeas corpus in parts of South Carolina, and federal prosecutions broke the first Klan.
The Colfax massacre, 1873
On April 13, 1873, after a disputed election, white paramilitaries attacked Black men defending the courthouse in Colfax, Louisiana. Many were killed after they surrendered. Estimates of the dead range from about 60 to 150 or more. In United States v. Cruikshank (1876) the Supreme Court threw out the federal convictions, weakening the Enforcement Acts.
The Redeemers
Through violence, fraud and economic pressure, white Democrats calling themselves “Redeemers” took back state after state. By 1876 only South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida still had Republican governments. A depression that began in 1873 turned Northern attention elsewhere.
The End and Its Legacy
1877Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877
The 1876 presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden came down to disputed returns from South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida. A special commission gave all the disputed votes to Hayes. In an informal bargain, Southern Democrats accepted his victory, and in April 1877 Hayes withdrew federal troops from the statehouses in South Carolina and Louisiana. The Republican governments there collapsed, and Reconstruction was over.
1896Plessy v. Ferguson
Jim Crow
Over the next decades, Southern states took away Black voting rights without openly breaking the 15th Amendment. They used poll taxes, literacy tests applied unfairly, “grandfather clauses” and all-white primaries, backed by violence. Mississippi’s 1890 constitution showed the way. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court ruled 7 to 1 that segregation laws were constitutional if facilities were “separate but equal.” That decision stood until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and the 14th and 15th Amendments became the legal basis of the civil rights movement.
Was Reconstruction a Failure?
How historians answer this question has changed a great deal, and the older answer did real harm.
The Dunning School
In the early 1900s, historians led by William A. Dunning of Columbia University described Reconstruction as a disaster forced on the white South by vengeful Northerners and corrupt Black officials. Their work relied on racist assumptions, and it was used to justify taking away Black voting rights. The 1915 film The Birth of a Nation spread the same story.
Du Bois answers back
In Black Reconstruction in America (1935), W. E. B. Du Bois argued that freedpeople were the main actors of the era, that Reconstruction governments built schools and expanded democracy, and that they were overthrown by force. Most white historians ignored the book for decades.
Foner’s “unfinished revolution”
Eric Foner’s Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution (1988) built on Du Bois and newer research. He argues that Reconstruction failed in its own time but left the amendments that later generations used to win civil rights.
So, a failure?
Most historians today would say Reconstruction was defeated rather than that it failed. Ask yourself: failed at what, and for whom? It did not secure land or lasting voting rights. It did end slavery for good and put equal citizenship into the Constitution.
Timeline, 1863 to 1877
Click or tap (or Tab to) an event and press Enter to open it. Use the buttons to show only one kind of event. The last entry, from 1896, shows the legacy.
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Dot colors: law or ruling violence politics and voices
1863 Ten Percent Plan law
Lincoln offers pardons and a path back for Confederate states (December 8).
1864 Wade-Davis Bill law
Congress demands a majority loyalty oath; Lincoln pocket-vetoes it in July.
1865 Field Order No. 15 law
Sherman sets aside coastal land for freed families (January 16).
1865 Freedmen’s Bureau created law
Congress creates the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (March 3).
1865 Lincoln assassinated violence
Andrew Johnson becomes president (April 15).
1865 Black Codes law
Mississippi and South Carolina pass the first codes in November; other states follow.
1865 13th Amendment ratified law
Slavery abolished, except as punishment for crime (December 6).
1866 Civil Rights Act law
Passed over Johnson’s veto (April 9).
1866 Memphis and New Orleans violence
White mobs and police kill dozens of Black residents and Republicans (May and July).
1867 Reconstruction Acts law
Military districts and new state constitutions with Black male suffrage (from March 2).
1868 Johnson impeached politics and voices
House impeaches in February; Senate acquits in May by one vote.
1868 14th Amendment ratified law
Citizenship and equal protection (July 9).
1870 15th Amendment ratified law
Voting rights regardless of race (February 3).
1870 Revels and Rainey seated politics and voices
First Black U.S. senator (February) and first Black member of the House to be seated (December).
1871 Ku Klux Klan Act law
The last of the Enforcement Acts of 1870–71.
1873 Colfax massacre violence
White paramilitaries kill dozens of Black men in Louisiana (April 13).
1876 United States v. Cruikshank law
The Supreme Court overturns the Colfax convictions.
1877 Compromise of 1877 politics and voices
Hayes becomes president; federal troops stop protecting Republican governments.
1896 Plessy v. Ferguson (legacy) law
The Supreme Court upholds “separate but equal.”
Primary Sources
5 sources from the era, quoted exactly from reliable editions. The first one brings together the key section of each of the three amendments.
Some of these documents use the language of their time, including words like “negro” and “mulatto.” They are quoted as written because they are evidence.
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
The Reconstruction Amendments: Section 1 of the 13th (1865), 14th (1868) and 15th (1870) Amendments
Notice the loophole in the 13th Amendment: “except as a punishment for crime.” Southern states used it to lease prisoners, most of them Black, to planters and companies.
“I. The islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns river, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of the negroes now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States.”
“…so that each family shall have a plot of not more than (40) forty acres of tillable ground…”
Gen. William T. Sherman, Special Field Orders No. 15, Savannah, Georgia, January 16, 1865 (Sections I and III)
This is the origin of “forty acres.” The order gave settlers “possessory titles,” not full ownership, which made it easy for Johnson to take the land back.
“Every freedman, free negro and mulatto shall, on the second Monday of January, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six, and annually thereafter, have a lawful home or employment, and shall have written evidence thereof…”
“Every civil officer shall, and every person may, arrest and carry back to his or her legal employer any freedman, free negro, or mulatto who shall have quit the service of his or her employer before the expiration of his or her term of service without good cause…”
Mississippi, An Act to Confer Civil Rights on Freedmen, 1865 (Sections 5 and 7)
Despite its title, the law tied Black workers to their employers. Any white person could arrest a worker who left a job.
“It is said that we are ignorant; I admit it. But if we know enough to be hung, we know enough to vote. If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he knows enough to vote; taxation and representation should go together.”
Frederick Douglass, “What the Black Man Wants,” speech to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Boston, January 26, 1865
Douglass spoke as the war was ending. He argued that the vote, not charity, was what freedpeople needed to protect themselves.
“I served you faithfully for thirty-two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680.”
“Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows.”
Jourdon Anderson to his former enslaver, Col. P. H. Anderson, Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865
His former enslaver had written asking him to come back to work. Anderson’s math holds up: 32 years at $300 a year is $9,600, and 20 years at $104 a year is $2,080, for a total of $11,680. The letter appeared in newspapers that year.
Key Terms
Reconstruction
The period from 1863 to 1877 when the nation decided how to bring back the Confederate states and what freedom would mean for about four million freed people.
Freedpeople
People freed from slavery by the war, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment.
Black Codes
Southern state laws of 1865–66 that restricted Black people’s freedom of movement, work and legal rights.
Radical Republicans
Members of Congress who pushed for full citizenship and voting rights for Black men and tough terms for the South.
Impeachment
A formal charge of wrongdoing by the House against an official. The Senate then holds a trial.
Sharecropping
Farming land owned by someone else in return for a share of the crop, often trapping families in debt.
Redeemers
White Southern Democrats who took back control of state governments in the 1870s, often through violence and fraud.
Jim Crow
The system of laws and customs that enforced racial segregation and kept Black Southerners from voting, from the 1870s to the 1960s.
Poll tax
A fee required to vote, used to keep poor Black and white voters from the polls.
Discussion Questions
Compare Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan with the Wade-Davis Bill. What did each side think the war had been fought for?
The 13th Amendment allows involuntary servitude “as a punishment for crime.” How did Southern states use that exception, and why does it still come up today?
Jourdon Anderson asks for back wages instead of answering his former enslaver’s offer directly. What does his letter tell you about what freedom meant to him?
Why do you think land reform failed while voting rights were written into the Constitution? Which mattered more for freedpeople’s lives?
Douglass said, “if we know enough to be hung, we know enough to vote.” What kind of argument is he making, and who was he trying to persuade?
Du Bois and Foner argue Reconstruction was not a failure of Black Americans but a revolution that was overthrown. What evidence on this page supports or challenges that view?
Test Yourself
10 questions on Reconstruction. Click an answer to check it.
From the Ten Percent Plan to Plessy
Sources
Where the quotations and figures on this page come from. All the documents quoted are in the public domain.
Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (Harper & Row, 1988), and Freedom’s Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders during Reconstruction (1993), source of the officeholder estimate.
W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935).