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The temporary Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (known as the Freedmen's Bureau) is established within the War Department.
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The leader of the Confederate Army, Robert E. Lee, surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse. The bloody Civil War officially comes to and end.
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White people begin attacking African Americans on the streets of Memphis, Tennessee. Over 40 African Americans are killed and hundreds of homes and churches are burned.
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Tennessee becomes the first state from the South to be allowed back into the United States. It was also the last state to leave the Union when the war began.
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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.
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Congress creates the Department of Justice.
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A group of white people called the White League get into a fight with the Louisiana state militia. The militia is made of almost all African Americans and over 100 of them are killed, including over 50 who were killed after they surrendered.
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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.
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Congress passes the last bill of Reconstruction, which makes segregation in public places illegal. However, the Supreme Court overturns the Civil Rights Bill in 1883.
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Both Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden claim they won the presidential election. The Republicans make a deal to stop Reconstruction in exchange for their candidate becoming president of the United States.