Reconstruction Era Overview

Following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson led postwar Reconstruction under the principle that Southern states had no legal right to secede.
Johnson appointed provisional governors who set up all-white state governments; these bodies enacted Black Codes, such as Saint Landry parish laws requiring written labor permits and white supervision.
The Freedmen's Bureau (1865–1870) helped establish primary, secondary, and higher educational institutions, including Fisk and Howard universities.
President Johnson ordered all confiscated Confederate land returned to former owners, preventing former slaves from receiving 40 acre plots promised under General Sherman's Field Order 15.
Sharecropping replaced slavery across the South, tying freed African Americans and poor white farmers to landowner property in a system of quasi-serfdom.

Radical Republicans, including Thaddeus Stevens, pushed to expand federal power to guarantee civil rights and land redistribution.
Congress overrode Andrew Johnson's presidential veto to pass the Civil Rights Act, which established nationwide equality before the law and defined all people born in the United States as citizens.
The Fourteenth Amendment defined citizenship, guaranteed equal protection, and extended Bill of Rights protections to the states.
Over Johnson's veto, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, dividing the South into five military districts and requiring states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and enroll black male voters.
Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment, prohibiting states from denying the right to vote based on race.

Approximately 2,000 African Americans held public office during Reconstruction; Pinkney B. S. Pinchback served as Governor of Louisiana from 1872 to 1873.
Republican governments in the South created functioning multiracial administrations and established segregated public school systems.
Opponents resisted through political violence organized by groups like the Ku Klux Klan (founded in 1866), which targeted black and white Republicans, culminating in events like the massacre at Colfax, Louisiana.
White Southern politicians, calling themselves Redeemers, took control of state governments as political violence and discriminatory practices reduced black voter participation.

An economic depression beginning in 1873 reduced Northern political commitment and financial backing for Reconstruction efforts.
The 1876 presidential election between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes yielded disputed electoral votes in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida.
A 15 man electoral commission awarded the disputed electoral votes to Rutherford B. Hayes.
Through the Bargain of 1877, Hayes secured the presidency by agreeing to withdraw federal troops from the South, cede regional political control to Southern Democrats, and build a transcontinental railroad through Texas.
The removal of federal oversight enabled Southern state legislatures to pass Jim Crow laws that curtailed legal protections, voting access, and socioeconomic mobility for African Americans.