American History: Beginnings to 1877: 9. The Reconstruction Era, Lessons 1–4

Almost overnight, there was a new class of nearly four million people known as freedmen—men and women who had been freed from slavery.

The era following the Civil War became known as Reconstruction, or the physical, political, and social rebuilding of the South.

Lincoln's plan also offered amnesty, or government pardon, to Confederates who swore loyalty to the Union.

Each state also had to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, which banned slavery throughout the nation.

In 1864, they passed an alternative plan, the Wade-Davis Bill.

The Thirteenth Amendment gave Congress the power to intervene, and later to pass additional legislation protecting civil rights.

When President Johnson ignored the report, members of Congress called Radical Republicans vowed to take control of Reconstruction.

On February 24, 1868, the House of Representatives voted to impeach, or bring formal charges against, Johnson.

Republicans believed that freedmen would have the capability to defend their rights if they could vote.

Many southerners bitterly resented the imposition of military rule.

They called white southern Republicans scalawags, a word used for small, scruffy horses.

Southerners jested that these northerners were in such a hurry to move south that they had time only to fling a few clothes into carpetbags, a type of cheap suitcase. They became known as carpetbaggers.

Some white southerners formed secret societies to help them regain power. The most notorious was the Ku Klux Klan, or KKK.

During Reconstruction, many freedmen and poor whites became sharecroppers on plantations. As sharecroppers, they rented and farmed a plot of land in exchange for a share of the crop at harvest time.

To many freedmen, sharecropping offered a measure of independence. Many anticipated owning their own land one day.

At the same time, they employed violence in order to prevent African Americans from voting.

Southern Democrats could have fought the decision. Instead, they agreed to support the commission's decision in return for a promise by Hayes to end Reconstruction. This agreement is known as the Compromise of 1877.

Many of these laws specifically intended to prevent African Americans from voting.

Over time, many southern states passed poll taxes, requiring voters to pay a fee each time they voted.

To increase the number of white voters, states passed grandfather clauses. These laws stated that if a voter's father or grandfather had been eligible to vote on January 1, 1867—a date after Johnson restored rebels' right to vote—the voter did not have to take a literacy test.

After 1877, segregation, or separation of races, became the law of the South.