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10 Percent Plan
Lincoln issues a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which comes to be known as his 10 Percent Plan. -
Freedmen Savings Bank
Congress also charters the Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company, commonly called the Freedmen's Savings Bank. -
Lincoln Conspirators
Four people are hanged in Washington, D.C., after being convicted of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. -
Union Demobilized
The Union Army is quickly demobilized. From a troop strength of one million on May 1, only 152,000 Union soldiers remain in the South by the end of 1865. -
Period: to
reconstruction time period
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black code
Southern legislatures begin drafting "Black Codes" to re-establish white supremacy. -
The south Grows
Southern towns and cities start to experience a large influx of freedmen. Over the next five years, the black populations of the South's ten largest cities will double. -
Ku Klux Klan Begins
An organization primarily composed of Confederate Army veterans founds the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a terrorist group formed to intimidate blacks and other ethnic and religious minorities. It first meets in Pulaski, Tennessee. The Klan is the first of many secret terrorist organizations organized in the South for the purpose of reestablishing white authority. -
Racial Violence Rages
Racial violence rages in Memphis, Tennessee for three days as whites assault blacks on the streets. In the aftermath, 48 people, nearly all black, are dead, and hundreds of black homes, churches, and schools have been pillaged or burned. Many more are injured. -
Civil rights Bill
Congress passes the Civil Rights Bill over Johnson's veto. Johnson objects to the Bill on the grounds that blacks did not deserve to become citizens, and that doing so would discriminate against the white race. He also thought that both the Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen's Bureau Bill would centralize power at the federal level, thus depriving states of the authority to govern their own affairs (a typical prewar philosophy of government). -
Fourteenth Amendment Ratified
The Fourteenth Amendment is ratified: it revokes the three-fifths compromise in the Constitution and creates a new federal category of citizenship. It is quite possibly the most important constitutional amendment ever ratified. -
Thaddeus Stevens Dies
Thaddeus Stevens, Radical Republican leader in Congress, dies at age 76. -
Panic of 1870
Financial panic and depression follow the failure of the Philadelphia investment house owned by Jay Cooke, who had helped finance the Union war effort by selling federal bonds to farmers and workers. Of the country's 364 railroads, 89 will go bankrupt. Some 18,000 businesses will fail in the next two years. -
Amnesty Act
Grant signs the Amnesty Act, although the final legislation is less generous than he had wanted. Now only a few hundred former Confederates are excluded from political privileges. -
Reconstruction Ends
Almost immediately after taking office, Hayes withdraws the federal troops from the South (the last states remaining under Reconstruction are Louisiana and South Carolina). The last Radical state governments collapse and the Redemption Period begins. -
Summer riots
A summer of race riots and terrorism directed at blacks commences in South Carolina. President Grant sends federal troops to restore order. -
Clinton Massacre
More than twenty black Americans are killed in a massacre in Clinton, Mississippi. -
United States v. Cruikshank
In the United States v. Cruikshank: the Supreme Court asserts that, Fifteenth Amendment notwithstanding, the Constitution "has not conferred the right of suffrage upon anyone." The decision emphasizes that the right to vote in the U.S. comes from the states, though "the right of exemption from the prohibited discrimination" comes from the federal government. This decision echoes Minor v. Happersett, which is passed the same year. -
Close election
In the presidential election, the outcome in the Electoral College appears too close to be conclusive in the campaign of Samuel Tilden (Democrat) versus Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican).
