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Period: to
Civil War Reconstruction
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Lincoln announces 10% plan
A state could be readmitted if 10 percent of its voters swore a loyalty oath to the Union and agreed to the end of slavery -
Lincoln Re-Elcected
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Lincoln vetoes Wade-Davis Bill
This bill required the states to accept the end of slavery and to grant all African American men the right to vote. It called for more than half of a state’s voters to sign a loyalty oath before that state could be readmitted. This oath was stricter than Lincoln’s loyalty oath; - Lincoln gets rid of it -
Congress creates Freedmen’s Bureau
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, or Freedman’s Bureau, was established in March 1865 as a welfare agency to help formerly enslaved people become full citizens. Some of the services it provided included handing out food and clothing, building schools and hospitals, and helping find missing family members. -
Lee Surrenders at Appomattox Court House – Civil War ends
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Lincoln assassinated; Johnson becomes president
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Mississippi enacts first Black Code
These were laws that made African Americans second-class citizens. Black Codes included laws that denied African Americans the right to vote. Some states prohibited intermarrying among blacks and whites and denied blacks the right to serve on juries. Others required segregation in public places and imposed more severe punishments for black criminals than for white ones. -
13th Amendment approved and ratified by Congress
abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865. The amendment was ratified by the required number of states on December 6, 1865 -
• Johnson declares reconstruction complete
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Radical Republicans
Radicals strongly opposed slavery during the war and after the war distrusted ex-Confederates, demanding harsh policies for punishing the former rebels, and emphasizing equality, civil rights, and voting rights for the "freedmen" -
1st, 2nd, and 3rd Reconstruction Acts
The act applied to all the ex-Confederate states in the South, except Tennessee who had already ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. It split the states into five military districts, each under the control of a Northern General whose responsibility it was to protect life and property. The First Reconstruction Act also demanded the need for new state delegates and constitutions, the ratification of the Fourteenth amendment, and the provisions of equal rights for each citizen. -
Johnson impeached
On February 21, 1868, Johnson decided to rid himself of Stanton once and for all and appointed General Lorenzo Thomas, an individual far less favorable to the Congress than Grant, as secretary of war. Stanton refused to yield, barricading himself in his office, and the House of Representatives, which had already discussed impeachment after Johnson’s first dismissal of Stanton, initiated formal impeachment proceedings against the president. -
14th Amendment ratified
The amendment grants citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" which included former slaves who had just been freed after the Civil War. -
Ulysses S. Grant elected
When he entered the White House the following year, Grant was not only politically inexperienced, he was—at the age of 46—the youngest president theretofore. Though scrupulously honest, Grant became known for appointing people who were not of good character. While he had some success during his time in office, including pushing through ratification of the 15th Amendment and establishing the National Parks Service, his administration's scandals rocked both of his presidential terms, and he didn' -
Sharecropping
Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land. -
15th Amendment ratified
The 15th Amendment, granting African-American men the right to vote, -
Enforcement Acts
three bills passed by the United States Congress between 1870 and 1871. They were criminal codes which protected African-Americans' right to vote, to hold office, to serve on juries, and receive equal protection of laws. -
• Amnesty Act of 1872
United States federal law that removed voting restrictions and office-holding disqualification against most of the secessionists who rebelled in the American Civil War, except for some 500 military leaders of the Confederacy. -
• Freedmen’s Bureau terminated
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• Lame-duck Congress passes Civil Rights Act
the lame-duck Republican-controlled Congress, in a last-ditch effort to protect what remained of Reconstruction, managed to pass a civil-rights bill that sought to guarantee freedom of access, regardless of race, to the "full and equal enjoyment" of many public facilities. Citizens were given the right to sue for personal damages. -
Disputed election
candidates running for President were Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, and Samuel J. Tilden, a Democrat. The first returns indicated a victory for Tilden, who had won the popular vote with 4,284,020 votes to Hayes' 4,036,572. But Tilden's 184 electoral votes -- the votes that would decide the Presidency -- were still one short of a majority, while Hayes' 165 electoral votes left him 20 ballots away. The votes of three Southern states and one western state still had not been counted. The 20 ele -
Hayes declared president; Reconstruction ends
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Compromise of 1877
Immediately after the presidential election of 1876, it became clear that the outcome of the race hinged largely on disputed returns from Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina–the only three states in the South with Reconstruction-era Republican governments still in power. As a bipartisan congressional commission debated over the outcome early in 1877, allies of the Republican Party candidate Rutherford Hayes met in secret with moderate southern Democrats in order to negotiate acceptance of Haye
