Reconstruction: A Timeline of the Post-Civil War Era
For a 14-year period, the U.S. government took steps to try and integrate the nation s newly freed Black population into society.
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Recently freed African Americans receive rations. Credit: Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images
For a 14-year period, the U.S. government took steps to try and integrate the nation s newly freed Black population into society.
Between 1863 and 1877, the U.S. government undertook the task of integrating nearly four million formerly enslaved people into society after the Civil War bitterly divided the country over the issue of slavery. A white slaveholding south that had built its economy and culture on slave labor was now forced by its defeat in a war that claimed 620,000 lives to change its economic, political and social relations with African Americans.