what is the definition of reconstruction in history

Reconstruction, in U.S. history, the period (1865–77) that followed the American Civil War and during which attempts were made to redress the inequities of slavery and its political, social, and economic legacy and to solve the problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 states that had seceded at or before the outbreak of war.

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What is reconstruction mean in history?

Reconstruction (1865-1877), the turbulent era following the Civil War, was the effort to reintegrate Southern states from the Confederacy and 4 million newly-freed people into the United States.

What is the best definition of reconstruction?

Definition of reconstruction 1a : the action of reconstructing : the act or process of rebuilding, repairing, or restoring something reconstruction efforts to repair hurricane damage the reconstruction of the dam the reconstruction of postwar Europe.

What is reconstruction kid definition?

The rebuilding of the South after the Civil War is called the Reconstruction. The Reconstruction lasted from 1865 to 1877. The purpose of the Reconstruction was to help the South become a part of the Union again.

What is reconstruction in African American history?

In the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, newly freed African Americans faced monumental challenges to establish their own households, farm their own lands, establish community institutions and churches, and to pursue equal justice under the law in a period of racist violence.

What is Reconstruction with example?

uncountable noun. Reconstruction is the process of making a country normal again after a war, for example by making the economy stronger and by replacing buildings that have been damaged. ...America's part in the post-war reconstruction of Germany. [

Why did the Reconstruction happen?

The Reconstruction implemented by Congress, which lasted from 1866 to 1877, was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War, providing the means for readmitting them into the Union, and defining the means by which whites and blacks could live together in a nonslave society.

What were the main points of Reconstruction?

Reconstruction encompassed three major initiatives: restoration of the Union, transformation of southern society, and enactment of progressive legislation favoring the rights of freed slaves.

What are 3 facts about Reconstruction?

10 Things You Should Know About The Reconstruction EraLincoln's death launched a government squabble (and retaliation feelings). ... Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. ... The Radical Republicans took control of Congress. ... For the first time in U.S. History, a president was impeached.More items...•

When did Reconstruction begin?

December 8, 1863 – March 31, 1877Reconstruction Era / Period

What did Reconstruction do for slaves?

In 1866, Radical Republicans won the election, and created the Freedmen's Bureau to offer former slaves food, clothing, and advice on labor contracts. During Reconstruction, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were passed in order to attempt to bring equality to blacks.

What was American Reconstruction?

Reconstruction refers to the period immediately after the Civil War from 1865 to 1877 when several United States administrations sought to reconstruct society in the former Confederate states in particular by establishing and protecting the legal rights of the newly freed black population.

How did Reconstruction help African Americans?

During the decade known as Radical Reconstruction (1867-77), Congress granted Black American men the status and rights of citizenship, including the right to vote, as guaranteed by the 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

What does Reconstruction mean in social studies?

Reconstruction, in U.S. history, the period (1865–77) that followed the American Civil War and during which attempts were made to redress the inequities of slavery and its political, social, and economic legacy and to solve the problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 states that had seceded at or ...

What is the synonym of Reconstruction?

1 as in overhaul, redesign.

What were the 3 points of Lincoln's Reconstruction plan?

The three points of Lincoln's reconstruction plan were to ensure 10 percent of the citizens of former Confederate states swore an oath to the union, to then work to establish new state constitutions, and to provide opportunities for former Confederate soldiers and sympathizers to be granted full pardons for their ...

What does Reconstruction mean in medical terms?

(REE-kun-STRUK-tiv SER-juh-ree) Surgery that is done to reshape or rebuild (reconstruct) a part of the body changed by previous surgery.

What was the Reconstruction era?

The Reconstruction era was the period after the American Civil War from 1865 to 1877, during which the United States grappled with the challenges o...

Why was the Reconstruction era important?

The Reconstruction era redefined U.S. citizenship and expanded the franchise, changed the relationship between the federal government and the gover...

What were the Reconstruction era promises?

While U.S. Pres. Andrew Johnson attempted to return the Southern states to essentially the condition they were in before the American Civil War, Re...

Was the Reconstruction era a success or a failure?

During a brief period in the Reconstruction era, African Americans voted in large numbers and held public office at almost every level, including i...

What was the purpose of the reconstruction?

Reconstruction (1865-1877), the turbulent era following the Civil War, was the effort to reintegrate Southern states from the Confederacy and 4 million newly-freed people into the United States. Under the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866, new southern state legislatures passed restrictive “ Black Codes ” to control ...

What did the Reconstruction Act of 1867 do?

The following March, again over Johnson’s veto, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which temporarily divided the South into five military districts and outlined how governments based on universal (male) suffrage were to be organized. The law also required southern states to ratify the 14th Amendment, which broadened the definition of citizenship, granting “equal protection” of the Constitution to formerly enslaved people, before they could rejoin the Union. In February 1869, Congress approved the 15th Amendment (adopted in 1870), which guaranteed that a citizen’s right to vote would not be denied “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

What happened after 1867?

After 1867, an increasing number of southern whites turned to violence in response to the revolutionary changes of Radical Reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations targeted local Republican leaders, white and Black, and other African Americans who challenged white authority.

How did emancipation change the Civil War?

Emancipation changed the stakes of the Civil War, ensuring that a Union victory would mean large-scale social revolution in the South. It was still very unclear, however, what form this revolution would take. Over the next several years, Lincoln considered ideas about how to welcome the devastated South back into the Union, but as the war drew to a close in early 1865, he still had no clear plan. In a speech delivered on April 11, while referring to plans for Reconstruction in Louisiana, Lincoln proposed that some Black people–including free Black people and those who had enlisted in the military–deserved the right to vote. He was assassinated three days later, however, and it would fall to his successor to put plans for Reconstruction in place.

What was the most radical development of reconstruction?

The participation of African Americans in southern public life after 1867 would be by far the most radical development of Reconstruction, which was essentially a large-scale experiment in interracial democracy unlike that of any other society following the abolition of slavery.

What were the laws of 1865 and 1866?

As a result of Johnson’s leniency, many southern states in 1865 and 1866 successfully enacted a series of laws known as the “ black codes ,” which were designed to restrict freed Black peoples’ activity and ensure their availability as a labor force. These repressive codes enraged many in the North, including numerous members of Congress, which refused to seat congressmen and senators elected from the southern states.

What were the achievements of the South during reconstruction?

Among the other achievements of Reconstruction were the South’s first state-funded public school systems, more equitable taxation legislation, laws against racial discrimination in public transport and accommodations and ambitious economic development programs (including aid to railroads and other enterprises).

What was the first comprehensive plan for reconstruction?

In December 1863, less than a year after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln announced the first comprehensive program for Reconstruction, the Ten Percent Plan . This offered a pardon to all Southerners, except Confederate leaders, who took an oath affirming loyalty to the Union and support for emancipation. When 10 percent of a state's voters had taken such an oath, they could establish a new state government. To Lincoln, the plan was more an attempt to weaken the Confederacy than a blueprint for the postwar South. Although it was put into operation in parts of the Union-occupied South, none of the new governments achieved broad local support or were recognized by Congress. In 1864, Congress enacted and Lincoln pocket vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill, which proposed to delay the formation of new Southern governments until a majority of voters had taken a loyalty oath. Some Republicans were already convinced that equal rights for the former slaves must accompany the South's readmission to the Union. In his last speech, in April 1865, Lincoln himself expressed the view that some Southern blacks -- the "very intelligent" and those who had served in the Union army - ought to enjoy the right to vote.

What were the changes in the South during reconstruction?

In the South, a politically mobilized black community joined with white allies to bring the Republican party to power, and with it a redefinition of the purposes and responsibilities of government.

What did the radical Republicans call for in 1865?

When Congress assembled in December 1865, Radical Republicans called for the abrogation of the Johnson governments and the establishment of new ones based on equality before the law and manhood suffrage. But the more numerous moderate Republicans hoped to work with Johnson, while modifying his program. Congress refused to seat the Congressmen and Senators elected from the Southern states, and in early 1866 passed and sent to Johnson the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills. The first extended the life of an agency Congress had created in 1865 to oversee the transition from slavery to freedom. The second defined all persons born in the United States as national citizens, who were to enjoy equality before the law.

How many military districts were there in the South during the reconstruction?

The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts, and provided for the establishment of new governments, based on manhood suffrage. Thus began the period of Radical or Congressional Reconstruction, which lasted until 1877.

What was the first major piece of legislation in American history to become law over a president's veto?

The Civil Rights Act became the first major piece of legislation in American history to become law over a president's veto. Administering the Oath of Allegiance to Confederate soldiers. Library of Congress Image. Reconstruction (1865-1877), the period that followed the American Civil War, is perhaps the most controversial era in American history.

What was the purpose of the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills?

The first extended the life of an agency Congress had created in 1865 to oversee the transition from slavery to freedom.

How many African Americans served in Congress during reconstruction?

Some 16 African-Americans served in Congress during Reconstruction, including Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce in the U. S. Senate, over 600 in state legislatures, and hundreds more in local offices, from sheriffs to justices of the peace.

Examples of reconstruction in a Sentence

reconstruction of the health-care system They were able to determine the cause of the accident by careful reconstruction of the events leading up to it. The police staged a reconstruction of the crime.

Legal Definition of reconstruction

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What was the purpose of reconstruction?

Reconstruction addressed how the 11 seceding rebel states in the South would regain what the Constitution calls a " republican form of government " and be re-seated in Congress, the civil status of the former leaders of the Confederacy, and the constitutional and legal status of freedmen, especially their civil rights and whether they should be given the right to vote. Intense controversy erupted throughout the South over these issues.

What was the reconstruction period?

The Reconstruction era, was a period in American history following the American Civil War (1861–1865); it lasted from 1865 to 1877 and marked a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the United States.

What did Lincoln say about the Confederacy?

The Southern delegation included Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, John Archibald Campbell, and Robert M. T. Hunter. The Southerners proposed the Union recognition of the Confederacy, a joint Union–Confederate attack on Mexico to oust Emperor Maximilian I, and an alternative subordinate status of servitude for Blacks rather than slavery. Lincoln flatly rejected recognition of the Confederacy, and said that the slaves covered by his Emancipation Proclamation would not be re-enslaved. He said that the Union states were about to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery. Lincoln urged the governor of Georgia to remove Confederate troops and "ratify this constitutional amendment prospectively, so as to take effect—say in five years.... Slavery is doomed." Lincoln also urged compensated emancipation for the slaves as he thought the North should be willing to share the costs of freedom. Although the meeting was cordial, the parties did not settle on agreements.

What was Lincoln's plan for reconstruction?

In 1863, President Lincoln proposed a moderate plan for the Reconstruction of the captured Confederate state of Louisiana. The plan granted amnesty to rebels who took an oath of loyalty to the Union. Black freedmen workers were tied to labor on plantations for one year at a pay rate of $10 a month. Only 10% of the state's electorate had to take the loyalty oath in order for the state to be readmitted into the U.S. Congress. The state was required to abolish slavery in its new state constitution. Identical Reconstruction plans would be adopted in Arkansas and Tennessee. By December 1864, the Lincoln plan of Reconstruction had been enacted in Louisiana and the legislature sent two senators and five representatives to take their seats in Washington. However, Congress refused to count any of the votes from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee, in essence rejecting Lincoln's moderate Reconstruction plan. Congress, at this time controlled by the Radicals, proposed the Wade–Davis Bill that required a majority of the state electorates to take the oath of loyalty to be admitted to Congress. Lincoln pocket-vetoed the bill and the rift widened between the moderates, who wanted to save the Union and win the war, and the Radicals, who wanted to effect a more complete change within Southern society. Frederick Douglass denounced Lincoln's 10% electorate plan as undemocratic since state admission and loyalty only depended on a minority vote.

What did Lincoln do to the military?

Starting in March 1862, in an effort to forestall Reconstruction by the Radicals in Congress, President Lincoln installed military governors in certain rebellious states under Union military control. Although the states would not be recognized by the Radicals until an undetermined time, installation of military governors kept the administration of Reconstruction under presidential control, rather than that of the increasingly unsympathetic Radical Congress. On March 3, 1862, Lincoln installed a loyalist Democrat, Senator Andrew Johnson, as military governor with the rank of brigadier general in his home state of Tennessee. In May 1862, Lincoln appointed Edward Stanly military governor of the coastal region of North Carolina with the rank of brigadier general. Stanly resigned almost a year later when he angered Lincoln by closing two schools for Black children in New Bern. After Lincoln installed Brigadier General George Foster Shepley as military governor of Louisiana in May 1862, Shepley sent two anti-slavery representatives, Benjamin Flanders and Michael Hahn, elected in December 1862, to the House, which capitulated and voted to seat them. In July 1862, Lincoln installed Colonel John S. Phelps as military governor of Arkansas, though he resigned soon after due to poor health.

How was the Civil War financed?

The Civil War had been financed primarily by issuing short-term and long-term bonds and loans, plus inflation caused by printing paper money, plus new taxes. Wholesale prices had more than doubled, and reduction of inflation was a priority for Secretary McCulloch. A high priority, and by far the most controversial, was the currency question. The old paper currency issued by state banks had been withdrawn, and Confederate currency was worthless. The national banks had issued $207 million in currency, which was backed by gold and silver. The federal treasury had issued $428 million in greenbacks, which was legal tender but not backed by gold or silver. In addition about $275 million of coin was in circulation. The new administration policy announced in October would be to make all the paper convertible into specie, if Congress so voted. The House of Representatives passed the Alley Resolution on December 18, 1865, by a vote of 144 to 6. In the Senate it was a different matter, for the key player was Senator John Sherman, who said that inflation contraction was not nearly as important as refunding the short-term and long-term national debt. The war had been largely financed by national debt, in addition to taxation and inflation. The national debt stood at $2.8 billion. By October 1865, most of it in short-term and temporary loans. Wall Street bankers typified by Jay Cooke believe that the economy was about to grow rapidly, thanks to the development of agriculture through the Homestead Act, the expansion of railroads, especially rebuilding the devastated Southern railroads and opening the transcontinental railroad line to the West Coast, and especially the flourishing of manufacturing during the war. The goal premium over greenbacks was $145 in greenbacks to $100 in gold, and the optimists thought that the heavy demand for currency in an era of prosperity would return the ratio to 100. A compromise was reached in April 1866, that limited the treasury to a currency contraction of only $10 million over six months. Meanwhile, the Senate refunded the entire national debt, but the House failed to act. By early 1867, postbellum prosperity was a reality, and the optimists wanted an end to contraction, which Congress ordered in January 1868. Meanwhile, the Treasury issued new bonds at a lower interest rate to refinance the redemption of short-term debt. While the old state bank notes were disappearing from circulation, new national bank notes, backed by species, were expanding. By 1868 inflation was minimal.

How did reconstruction affect the South?

Reconstruction changed the means of taxation in the South. In the U.S. from the earliest days until today, a major source of state revenue was the property tax. In the South, wealthy landowners were allowed to self-assess the value of their own land. These fraudulent assessments were almost valueless, and pre-war property tax collections were lacking due to property value misrepresentation. State revenues came from fees and from sales taxes on slave auctions. Some states assessed property owners by a combination of land value and a capitation tax, a tax on each worker employed. This tax was often assessed in a way to discourage a free labor market, where a slave was assessed at 75 cents, while a free White was assessed at a dollar or more, and a free African American at $3 or more. Some revenue also came from poll taxes. These taxes were more than poor people could pay, with the designed and inevitable consequence that they did not vote.

What was the plan for reconstruction?

Under the plan, if one-tenth of a Confederate state’s prewar voters signed an oath of loyalty to the Union, they be would be allowed to form a new state government with the same constitutional rights and powers they had enjoyed before secession.

When Did Reconstruction End?

During the 1870s, the Radical Republicans began to back away from their expansive definition of the power of the federal government. Democrats argued that the Republican’s Reconstruction plan’s exclusion of the South’s “best men”—the White plantation owners—from political power was to blame for much of the violence and corruption in the region. The effectiveness of the Reconstruction Acts and constitutional amendments was further diminished by a series of Supreme Court decisions, beginning in 1873.

What was the President's plan for reconstruction?

Johnson’s plan for restoring the splintered Union pardoned all Southern White persons except Confederate leaders and wealthy plantation owners and restored all of their constitutional rights and property except enslaved persons.

What questions did reconstruction ask?

Reconstruction demanded answers to a multitude of difficult questions. On what terms would the Confederate states be accepted back into the Union? How were for former Confederate leaders, considered traitors by many in the North, to be dealt with? And perhaps most momentously, did emancipation mean that Black people were to enjoy the same legal and social status as White people?

How many states were divided under the First Reconstruction Act?

Enacted in March 1867, the First Reconstruction Act, also known as the Military Reconstruction Act, divided the former Confederate states into five Military Districts, each governed by a Union general.

What was Lincoln's plan for rebuilding the South?

More than a blueprint for rebuilding the postwar South, Lincoln saw the Ten Percent Plan as a tactic for further weakening the resolve of the Confederacy. After none of the Confederate states agreed to accept the plan, Congress in 1864 passed the Wade-Davis Bill, barring the Confederate states from rejoining the Union until a majority of the state’s voters had sworn their loyalty. Though Lincoln pocket vetoed the bill, he and many of his fellow Republicans remained convinced that equal rights for all formerly enslaved Black persons had to be a condition of a state’s readmission to the Union. On April 11, 1865, in his last speech before his assassination, Lincoln express his opinion that some “very intelligent” Black men or Black men who had joined the Union army deserved the right to vote. Notably, no consideration for the rights of Black women was expressed during Reconstruction.

How many slaves were freed during reconstruction?

government attempted to deal with the reintegration of the 11 Southern states that had seceded from the Union, along with 4 million newly freed enslaved people. Reconstruction demanded answers to a multitude of difficult questions.

What was the program established for reconstruction?

The program established for Reconstruction, largely the work of Republicans in the North , was far more severe than what President Abraham Lincoln had proposed before his assassination. Large numbers of white southerners resented being kept out of the “healing” of the nation that Lincoln had called for and were unwilling to give up their former authority. Ill feeling by former Confederates during Reconstruction led to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and a long-standing hatred among southerners for the Republican party.

What is the meaning of "reconstructed"?

the act of reconstructing, rebuilding, or reassembling, or the state of being reconstructed: the gigantic task of reconstruction after a fire. something reconstructed, rebuilt, or reassembled: a reconstruction of the sequence of events leading to his death; accurate reconstructions of ancient Greek buildings.

Why was the South divided into military districts during reconstruction?

During Reconstruction, the South was divided into military districts for the supervision of elections to set up new state governments. These governments often included carpetbaggers, as former officials of the Confederacy were not allowed to serve in them.

Who wrote the epic story of reconstruction through the lives of the first black congressmen?

Excerpted from Capitol Men: The Epic Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen by Philip Dray.

What did the black people do during reconstruction?

In the early years of Reconstruction, most blacks in rural areas of the South were left without land and forced to work as laborers on large white-owned farms and plantations in order to earn a living. Many clashed with former slave masters bent on reestablishing a gang-labor system similar to the one that prevailed under slavery.

What was the system of farming in the 1870s?

By the early 1870s, the system known as sharecropping had come to dominate agriculture across the cotton-planting South. Under this system, Black families would rent small plots of land, or shares, to work themselves; in return, they would give a portion of their crop to the landowner at the end of the year.

When did the land under federal control get returned to its owners?

Instead, as one of the first acts of Reconstruction, President Andrew Johnson ordered all land under federal control to be returned to its previous owners in the summer of 1865.

What did the Confederate government do to the labor force?

In an effort to regulate the labor force and reassert white supremacy in the postwar South, legislatures in former Confederate states soon passed restrictive laws denying Black people legal equality or political rights, and created “ black codes ” that forced former slaves to sign yearly labor contracts or be arrested and jailed for vagrancy.

Emancipation and Reconstruction

Andrew Johnson and Presidential Reconstruction

• At the end of May 1865, President Andrew Johnsonannounced his plans for Reconstruction, which reflected both his staunch Unionism and his firm belief in states’ rights. In Johnson’s view, the southern states had never given up their right to govern themselves, and the federal government had no right to determine voting requirements or other questio...

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Radical Reconstruction

Reconstruction Comes to An End