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January 1: President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that the majority of the nation's slave population "henceforth shall be free."

December 8: President Lincoln announces the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction

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Early 1864: President Lincoln begins Reconstruction in the Union-occupied former Confederate state of Louisiana

July: Congress passes its own, the Wade-Davis Bill. It ups the allegiance requirement from 10% to a majority of a state's voters

November 8: President Lincoln is reelected

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January 31: The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery throughout the Union, wins Congressional approval and is sent to the states for ratification

December: President Johnson declares the reconstruction process complete

December: The Clerk of the House refuses to include the Southern representatives in his roll call, and they are denied their elected seats.

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February: President Johnson vetoes a supplemental Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which Republican moderates have designed to extend protection to Southern blacks.

April:the Civil Rights Bill, grants citizenship and the same rights enjoyed by white citizens to all male persons in the United States "without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude

May 1: Racial violence rages in Memphis

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September 24:  Black Friday on the New York gold exchange

Fall:Violence against blacks continues throughout the South

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Winter: Articles begin to appear in the New York Tribune, accusing black lawmakers in South Carolina of corruption.

April 13: The Colfax Massacre.

September 8: The panic of 1873 begins with the failure of a Wall Street banking firm