However, Reconstruction did succeed in restoring the federal Union, limiting reprisals against the South, establishing the constitutional rights to national birthright citizenship, due process, equal protection of the laws, and male suffrage regardless of race, and a framework for eventual legal equality for Black people. Moreover, it offered reparations to former slaveowners but not to former slaves. Reconstruction had significant shortcomings, including the failure to protect freed Black people from Klan violence before 1871, as well as issues of starvation, disease, death, and brutal treatment of Union soldiers. In 1877, as part of a congressional compromise to elect a Republican as president after a disputed election, federal troops were withdrawn from the South. Grant (1869–1877) supported congressional Reconstruction protecting Black people, but faced declining support in the North with Liberal Republicans joining Democrats in calling for a withdrawal of the Army from the South. Opposing suffrage and rights for freedmen were the " Redeemers" Southern Bourbon Democrats President Andrew Johnson (1865–1869), and the Ku Klux Klan, which terrorized and murdered freedmen and Republicans throughout the former Confederacy. " Carpetbaggers" from the North and supportive white Southerners (" Scalawags") were involved in Reconstruction efforts. Army played vital roles in establishing a free labor economy, protecting freedmen's legal rights, and creating educational and religious institutions.
Republican coalitions in most ex-Confederate states aimed to transform Southern society. In 1866, Congress federalized the protection of civil rights in response to violent attacks against Black people in the South, and ex-Confederate states were required to guarantee freedmen's civil rights before rejoining the Union. Its main goals were to rebuild the nation after the war, reintegrate the former Confederate states, and address the social, political, and economic impacts of slavery.ĭuring this period, slavery was abolished, Confederate secession was eliminated, and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments (the Reconstruction Amendments) were added to the Constitution to grant equal civil rights to the newly-freed slaves. The Reconstruction era was a period in American history following the American Civil War (1861–1865) and lasting until approximately the Compromise of 1877.
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