What Happened During The Reconstruction Era?

The end of the Civil War did not mean that slavery was abolished. Freed slaves faced an uncertain future as they tried to make sense of their new status as free citizens. The South still needed to be rebuilt and reintegrated into the Union. This was the goal of Reconstruction, which lasted from 1865 to 1877 and was a time of great social and political change in the United States. In order to achieve these goals, Congress passed legislation like the Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed all citizens equal protection under the law. They also passed laws that ended slavery, such as Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment.
Reconstruction was a difficult and often violent process, as many white Southerners resisted the changes taking place. They did not want their old way of life disrupted any more than it already had been by war; they wanted their slaves back at work on farms where they could be controlled by whites; they wanted their society restored as much as possible, and they wanted Northerners out of their lives so they could do things their own way again. It is important to remember that reconstruction was a divisive time in American history that saw many setbacks and failures as well as many successes.