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Reconstruction was a time of great hope for Black Americans, but it was also a time of violence and backlash. In the late 1870s, white Southerners began to impose a system of racial segregation and discrimination known as Jim Crow.
Jim Crow laws denied Black Americans basic rights and opportunities, and they would remain in place for nearly a century. -
The Democratic and Republican Parties were realigned after the war. The Republican Party, which had championed abolition, became the dominant party in the North.
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The war accelerated the growth of industry in the North. -
(1861-1865)
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The most significant change was the abolition of slavery. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1865, outlawed slavery throughout the United States. This freed over four million enslaved people. -
The period following the war, known as Reconstruction (1865-1877), was a time of great upheaval as the nation grappled with how to reintegrate the defeated South and establish rights for the newly freed Black population. The federal government passed the 14th and 15th Amendments, which granted citizenship and voting rights to Black men, respectively. -
The war also removed a major obstacle to westward expansion. With the Confederacy no longer a threat, the federal government could focus its attention on acquiring new territories in the West. -
Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment guaranteed citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States, including former slaves. -
Prohibited states and the federal government from denying a citizen the right to vote "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." -
The South was devastated by the war. Cities were in ruins, infrastructure was destroyed, and plantations were no longer operational. Many formerly enslaved people left the plantations to seek new opportunities in cities or on their own land. However, Sharecropping, a system that replaced slavery in many ways, emerged and kept many Black southerners tied to the land and economically disadvantaged.
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