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The Thirteenth Amendment—passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864; by the House on January 31, 1865; and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865—abolished slavery “within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Congress required former Confederate states to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment as a ...

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The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was an important agency of early Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South.

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April 1865: President Lincoln assassinated

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April 1865: President Lincoln assassinated

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John Wilkes Booth was part of a family of celebrated actors, but he is remembered as the assassin who mortally wounded U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865, as part of a broader conspiracy that included an attempt on the life of Secretary of State William H. Seward

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May 1865: President Johnson's plan for Reconstruction

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May 1865: President Johnson's plan for Reconstruction

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Following Abraham Lincoln's death, President Andrew Johnson based his reconstruction plan on Lincoln's earlier measure. Johnson's plan also called for loyalty from ten percent of the men who had voted in the 1860 election. In addition, the plan called for granting amnesty and returning people's property if they pledged to be loyal to the United States.

The Confederate states would be required to uphold the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery; swear loyalty to the Union; and pay off their war debt. Then they could re-write their state constitutions, hold elections, and begin sending representatives to Washington.

Under the plan, Confederate leaders would have to apply directly to President Johnson in order to request pardon. Johnson issued over 13,000 pardons during his administration, and he passed several amnesty proclamations. The last one, issued Christmas Day 1868, granted sweeping pardons to former Confederates, including former Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

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Black codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. Though the Union victory had given some 4 million enslaved people their freedom, the question of freed Black people's status in the postwar South was still very much unresolved. Under black codes, many states required Black people to sign yearly labor contracts; if they refused, they risked being arrested, fined and forced into unpaid labor. Outrage over black codes helped undermine support for President Andrew Johnson and the Republican Party.

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The Civil Rights Act of 1866 (14 Stat. 27–30, enacted April 9, 1866, reenacted 1870) was the first United States federal law to define citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law... The Act was passed by Congress in 1866 and vetoed by United States President Andrew Johnson.

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The Ku Klux Klan was a loosely organized group of political and social terrorists during the Reconstruction, whose goals included

political defeat of the Republican Party and the maintenance of absolute white supremacy in response to newly gained civil and political rights by southern Blacks after the Civil War.

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On July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. ... Known as the "Reconstruction Amendment," it forbids any state to deny any person "life, liberty or property, without due process of law" or to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It also said All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."

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Passed by Congress February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870, the 15th amendment granted African American men the right to vote. ... For more than 50 years, the overwhelming majority of African American citizens were reduced to second-class citizenship under the “Jim Crow” segregation system.