Plans
ShopBecome a Member

Era II · 1861–1877

Union, Emancipation and Reconstruction

Republicans led the Union through civil war, ended slavery and wrote citizenship and equal protection into the Constitution—then, amid Southern violence, scandal and Northern fatigue, retreated from Reconstruction.

Overview

Lincoln’s election set secession in motion. Seven Deep South states left the Union before his inauguration and formed the Confederate States of America in February 1861. In his inaugural address Lincoln promised not to interfere with slavery where it existed but declared the Union perpetual. When Confederate batteries fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, he called for volunteers, and four more slave states seceded. With Southern members gone, Republicans controlled Congress and enacted much of the national program they had promised: the Homestead Act, the Pacific Railway Act and the Morrill Land-Grant College Act of 1862, a national banking system, higher tariffs and the first federal income taxes. In 1862 Congress also abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, compensating loyal owners, and prohibited it in the federal territories—the party’s founding pledge.

Emancipation came in stages. Congress moved first, with Confiscation Acts in 1861 and 1862 aimed at slaveholders in rebellion. After the Union victory at Antietam, Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation on September 22, 1862, and on January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation declared free all enslaved people in areas still in rebellion; it did not reach the loyal border states or areas already under Union control. The proclamation also opened the Army and Navy to Black men, and by war’s end roughly 179,000 had served as soldiers and another 19,000 in the Navy. In 1864 the party campaigned as the National Union Party, renominating Lincoln with Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, a War Democrat, on a platform calling for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery. Lincoln won, the House approved the Thirteenth Amendment on January 31, 1865, and it was ratified that December. Lincoln did not live to see it: he was shot on April 14, 1865, five days after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and died the next morning.

Reconstruction divided the party’s moderates and Radicals and set Congress against the president. Johnson restored Southern state governments on lenient terms, and several enacted “Black Codes” restricting the freedpeople. Congressional Republicans answered with the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the first federal law defining citizenship and protecting civil rights, passed over Johnson’s veto, and with the Fourteenth Amendment, guaranteeing birthright citizenship, due process and the equal protection of the laws. After sweeping the 1866 elections, they passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, placing ten former Confederate states under military supervision until they adopted new constitutions providing for Black male suffrage. When Johnson tried to remove Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the House impeached him in February 1868; the Senate fell one vote short of conviction, with seven Republicans voting to acquit.

Ulysses S. Grant, elected in 1868 on the slogan “Let us have peace,” presided over the high point of Reconstruction. The Fifteenth Amendment barred racial discrimination in voting; Hiram Revels of Mississippi and Joseph Rainey of South Carolina became the first Black members of the Senate and the House in 1870; and the Enforcement Acts of 1870–1871 allowed Grant’s administration to prosecute the Ku Klux Klan. But the party also fractured. Reformers bolted in 1872 as Liberal Republicans, and the Crédit Mobilier revelations and the Whiskey Ring cast a shadow over Grant’s second term. The Panic of 1873 and a Democratic landslide in the 1874 House elections sapped Northern support for intervention in the South, while intimidation and paramilitary violence helped Democrats regain control of most Southern states. After the disputed election of 1876, an Electoral Commission awarded every contested electoral vote to Rutherford B. Hayes, and in April 1877 federal troops stopped protecting the last Republican state governments in South Carolina and Louisiana. Reconstruction was over.

Timeline

  1. Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter

    The bombardment of the federal fort in Charleston Harbor opens the Civil War. Lincoln calls for 75,000 volunteers, and Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee join the Confederacy.

    Historical Record

  2. Congress enacts the Republican development program

    In a single session Congress passes the Homestead Act (signed May 20), the Pacific Railway Act (July 1) and the Morrill Land-Grant College Act (July 2)—measures stalled for years before the war, two of them promised in the 1860 platform.

    Primary Source

  3. Emancipation Proclamation

    Following his preliminary proclamation of September 22, 1862, Lincoln declares that all persons held as slaves in areas still in rebellion “are, and henceforward shall be free,” and provides for Black men to serve in the armed forces. It did not apply to the loyal border states or to areas already under Union control.

    Primary Source

  4. Gettysburg Address

    At the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, Lincoln calls in fewer than 300 words for “a new birth of freedom” and government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

    Primary Source

  5. House passes the Thirteenth Amendment

    After Senate approval in April 1864 and an earlier failed House vote, the House passes the amendment abolishing slavery by 119 to 56. It is ratified on December 6, 1865.

    Primary Source

  6. Lincoln assassinated

    Five days after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre and dies the next morning. Vice President Andrew Johnson becomes president.

    Historical Record

  7. Civil Rights Act of 1866 passes over Johnson’s veto

    Congress overrides the president to enact Senator Lyman Trumbull’s bill declaring all persons born in the United States, except Indians not taxed, to be citizens entitled to equal rights to make contracts, hold property and enjoy the full protection of the laws.

    Primary Source

  8. Congress proposes the Fourteenth Amendment

    The amendment guarantees birthright citizenship, due process and the equal protection of the laws, and bars many former Confederate officeholders from office. It is ratified on July 9, 1868.

    Primary Source

  9. First Reconstruction Act

    Passed over Johnson’s veto, the act divides ten former Confederate states into five military districts and requires each to adopt a new constitution providing for Black male suffrage and to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before readmission.

    Primary Source

  10. Senate acquits Andrew Johnson

    On the first article brought to a vote, 35 senators vote to convict and 19 to acquit—one vote short of the two-thirds required. Seven Republicans join the Democrats in voting to acquit.

    Historical Record

  11. Fifteenth Amendment ratified; first Black members of Congress

    The amendment forbids denying the vote on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. Three weeks later Hiram Revels of Mississippi becomes the first African American senator, and in December Joseph Rainey of South Carolina becomes the first African American member of the House.

    Primary Source

  12. Ku Klux Klan Act

    The third of the Enforcement Acts authorizes the president to use federal troops and suspend habeas corpus against conspiracies to deprive citizens of their rights. Grant invokes it that fall in nine South Carolina counties, and federal prosecutions largely suppress the Klan by 1872.

    Primary Source

  13. Civil Rights Act of 1875

    The last major Reconstruction law, first introduced by the late Charles Sumner, bars racial discrimination in public accommodations and jury service after provisions on schools are stripped out. The Supreme Court strikes down its public-accommodations sections in 1883.

    Primary Source

  14. Hayes declared the winner of the disputed election

    After an Electoral Commission awards all twenty contested electoral votes to the Republican ticket by 8-to-7 votes, Congress completes the count for Rutherford B. Hayes, 185 to 184. Within weeks, Hayes ends federal military protection for the last Republican governments in the South.

    Historical Record

People

  • President, 1861–1865

    Abraham Lincoln

    Led the Union through the Civil War, issued the Emancipation Proclamation and pressed for the Thirteenth Amendment.

  • General-in-chief of the Union armies; president, 1869–1877

    Ulysses S. Grant

    Accepted Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and, as president, used federal power against the Ku Klux Klan.

  • Vice president, 1865; president, 1865–1869

    Andrew Johnson

    A Tennessee War Democrat elected on the National Union ticket; his clashes with congressional Republicans over Reconstruction led to his impeachment and acquittal.

  • Representative from Pennsylvania; Radical Republican leader in the House

    Thaddeus Stevens

    Chaired Ways and Means during the war and pressed for Black suffrage, land for freedpeople and Johnson’s impeachment.

  • Senator from Massachusetts; chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, 1861–1871

    Charles Sumner

    The Senate’s leading advocate of equal rights; his civil rights bill became the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

  • Senator from Illinois; chairman of the Judiciary Committee

    Lyman Trumbull

    Helped frame the Thirteenth Amendment and wrote the Civil Rights Act of 1866; one of seven Republicans who voted to acquit Johnson.

  • Representative from Ohio

    John A. Bingham

    Principal author of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment and a House manager in Johnson’s impeachment trial.

  • Abolitionist and advocate of Black enlistment and suffrage

    Frederick Douglass

    Recruited Black soldiers for the Union Army, met with Lincoln at the White House and supported Grant in 1872.

  • Senator from Mississippi, 1870–1871

    Hiram Revels

    The first African American to serve in the U.S. Senate.

  • Representative from South Carolina, 1870–1879

    Joseph Rainey

    The first African American to serve in the House and, in 1874, the first to preside over it.

Documents

  • January 1, 1863

    Emancipation Proclamation

    Held by National Archives

    Declared free all enslaved people in areas then in rebellion.

    Primary Source

  • May 22, 1863

    War Department General Order 143

    Held by National Archives

    Created the Bureau of Colored Troops to organize Black regiments in the Union Army.

    Primary Source

  • November 19, 1863

    Gettysburg Address

    Held by Library of Congress

    Two of the five known manuscript copies, the Nicolay and Hay copies, are held by the Library of Congress.

    Primary Source

  • March 4, 1865

    Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

    Held by Library of Congress

    Primary Source

  • Passed by Congress January 31, 1865; ratified December 6, 1865

    Thirteenth Amendment

    Held by National Archives

    Abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime.

    Primary Source

  • April 9, 1866

    Civil Rights Act of 1866

    Held by National Archives

    The first federal law defining citizenship and protecting civil rights.

    Primary Source

  • Passed by Congress June 13, 1866; ratified July 9, 1868

    Fourteenth Amendment

    Held by National Archives

    Birthright citizenship, due process and equal protection of the laws.

    Primary Source

  • Passed by Congress February 26, 1869; ratified February 3, 1870

    Fifteenth Amendment

    Held by National Archives

    Barred denial of the vote on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

    Primary Source

Elections

YearElectionResultElectoral votes
18621862 Midterm ElectionsAmid military setbacks and controversy over emancipation, Democrats gained House seats and won the governorships of New York and New Jersey, but Republicans and their Unionist allies kept majorities in both houses.Republicans keep control of Congress despite Democratic gains—
1864Election of 1864Running as the National Union Party with Andrew Johnson, a War Democrat, the Republicans carried every participating state except Kentucky, Delaware and New Jersey. Union soldiers voted heavily for Lincoln.Abraham Lincoln (National Union) defeats George B. McClellan (D)212 of 233 cast
18661866 Midterm ElectionsVoters rejected President Johnson’s opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment and his lenient Reconstruction policy, giving congressional Republicans veto-proof majorities and control of Reconstruction.Republicans win more than two-thirds of both houses—
1868Election of 1868Grant won about 53 percent of the popular vote, aided by newly enfranchised Black voters in the reconstructed South. Mississippi, Texas and Virginia, not yet readmitted, did not take part.Ulysses S. Grant (R) defeats Horatio Seymour (D)214 of 294
1872Election of 1872Grant won 286 electoral votes and about 56 percent of the popular vote. Greeley died weeks after the election, before the Electoral College met, and the electors pledged to him scattered their votes.Ulysses S. Grant (R) defeats Horace Greeley (Liberal Republican and Democratic nominee)—
18741874 Midterm ElectionsIn the depression that followed the Panic of 1873, Democrats won a large House majority for the first time since before the war, ending the Republicans’ ability to pass new Reconstruction legislation.Democrats win control of the House—
1876Election of 1876Tilden won a majority of the popular vote, but twenty electoral votes from Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon were disputed. An Electoral Commission created by Congress awarded all of them to Hayes on party-line votes.Rutherford B. Hayes (R) defeats Samuel J. Tilden (D)185 of 369

Policies

  • 1862

    Homestead Act

    Offered 160 acres of surveyed public land to settlers, including women who headed households and immigrants who had declared their intention to become citizens, who lived on and improved it for five years.

    Primary Source

  • 1862

    Pacific Railway Act

    Backed construction of a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri River to the Pacific with land grants and government bonds. The Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines were joined in 1869.

    Primary Source

  • 1862

    Morrill Land-Grant College Act

    Granted states public land—30,000 acres for each senator and representative—to endow colleges teaching agriculture and the mechanic arts, the origin of the land-grant universities.

    Primary Source

  • 1862

    Slavery abolished in the capital and the territories

    Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia in April 1862, compensating loyal owners, and in June prohibited it in all federal territories—the pledge on which the party was founded.

    Historical Record

  • 1863–1864

    National banking system

    The National Currency Act of 1863 and the National Bank Act of 1864 created federally chartered banks and a uniform national currency, helping to finance the war.

    Historical Record

  • 1865–1872

    Freedmen’s Bureau

    Created in March 1865, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands provided food, medical care, schools and help with labor contracts across the former Confederacy. Congress extended it over Johnson’s veto in 1866.

    Historical Record

  • 1870–1871

    Enforcement Acts

    Three laws enforcing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments made interference with voting and conspiracies against civil rights federal crimes. The third, the Ku Klux Klan Act, let the president use troops and suspend habeas corpus against organized terror.

    Primary Source

  • 1871–1872

    The first Civil Service Commission

    Grant appointed the first Civil Service Commission and in 1872 put its recommendations for competitive examinations into effect, though Congress later refused to sustain the effort.

    Historical Record

Speeches

  • March 4, 1861

    First Inaugural Address

    Abraham Lincoln

    Delivered after seven states had seceded, the address pledged not to interfere with slavery in the states, denied any right of secession and appealed for peace.

    “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”
    Primary Source

  • November 19, 1863

    Gettysburg Address

    Abraham Lincoln

    Remarks at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, four and a half months after the Battle of Gettysburg.

    “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
    Primary Source

  • March 4, 1865

    Second Inaugural Address

    Abraham Lincoln

    With victory near, Lincoln reflected on slavery as the cause of the war and called for a generous peace.

    “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in”
    Primary Source

  • May 29, 1868

    Letter Accepting the Republican Nomination

    Ulysses S. Grant

    Grant’s brief letter to the convention president, Joseph R. Hawley, closed with four words that became the party’s slogan in 1868 and 1872.

    “Let us have peace.”
    Primary Source

Criticism & Debate

A historical institution earns trust by recording disagreement. It does not rewrite history around what a movement believes today. Each perspective below is stated in terms its own proponents would recognize.

Opposing View / Debate

Who should control Reconstruction, and how far should it go?

Republicans agreed that the Union must be restored and slavery ended, but divided over the terms of readmission, the rights of the freedpeople and whether the president or Congress should lead.

Radical Republicans

Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Benjamin Wade and their allies argued that Congress, not the president, must set the terms of return, and that freedpeople needed the vote, federal protection and, in Stevens’s view, land confiscated from leading Confederates. Their Wade–Davis Bill of 1864 would have required a majority of a state’s white men to swear loyalty before it could form a new government.

Moderate Republicans

Moderates such as Lyman Trumbull, William Pitt Fessenden and John Sherman sought to secure basic civil rights and national authority while restoring the states quickly. They wrote the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment, but at first hesitated over Black suffrage and rejected land confiscation.

Lincoln and Johnson

Lincoln’s 1863 plan offered readmission once ten percent of a state’s 1860 voters swore loyalty and accepted emancipation, and he pocket-vetoed the Wade–Davis Bill. Johnson went further, pardoning many former Confederates and opposing federal civil rights protections as an invasion of the states’ authority.

Sources

  1. Wade-Davis Bill (1864) · National Archives
  2. Andrew Johnson: Domestic Affairs · Miller Center, University of Virginia
Opposing View / Debate

Was the Liberal Republican revolt of 1872 reform or retreat?

In 1872 prominent Republicans broke with Grant, formed the Liberal Republican Party and nominated Horace Greeley, whom the Democrats also endorsed.

Liberal Republicans

Reformers including Carl Schurz, Lyman Trumbull and Charles Francis Adams condemned patronage and corruption in the Grant administration and called for civil service reform. They urged amnesty for former Confederates and an end to federal intervention in Southern governments, which they considered corrupt and unsustainable; many also favored lower tariffs.

Grant Republicans

Supporters of the administration, including Frederick Douglass, argued that the Liberal program would abandon Black Southerners to the Klan and to governments determined to reverse Reconstruction, and that Grant’s enforcement of civil rights outweighed the failings of some of his appointees.

Historians

Historians have seen the revolt both as the beginning of the civil service reform movement that later produced the Pendleton Act and as an early sign of the North’s retreat from Reconstruction.

Opposing View / Debate

How should the Grant administration’s scandals be weighed?

Grant’s presidency was marred by corruption among associates and officials, even as his administration enforced civil rights laws and began civil service reform.

Critics

Contemporary reformers and many later historians pointed to the Crédit Mobilier revelations of 1872, which implicated members of Congress including Vice President Schuyler Colfax; the Whiskey Ring tax frauds exposed in 1875, which reached Grant’s private secretary, Orville Babcock; and the 1876 impeachment of Secretary of War William Belknap, who had resigned hours earlier. They faulted Grant for trusting and defending friends.

Defenders and recent biographers

Grant’s defenders note that he was never shown to have profited personally, that most of the Crédit Mobilier dealings predated his presidency, that his Treasury Department pursued the Whiskey Ring prosecutions, and that his record on civil rights and the Klan prosecutions was stronger than that of most nineteenth-century presidents. Several recent biographers have argued for a more favorable assessment of his presidency.

Sources

  1. Ulysses S. Grant: Domestic Affairs · Miller Center, University of Virginia
Opposing View / Debate

Why did Republicans abandon Reconstruction?

By 1877 federal protection for Black Southerners’ rights had largely collapsed. Contemporaries and historians have explained the retreat, and judged it, in very different ways.

Advocates of withdrawal

Hayes and many Northern Republicans argued that military force could not sustain state governments indefinitely, that the small Army was needed in the West, and that reconciliation and local self-government would serve the country better. The Democratic House had already refused to fund the Army while it protected Republican governments, and Hayes accepted assurances from Southern Democratic leaders that they would respect Black citizens’ rights.

Southern Democrats

White Southern Democrats, who called their return to power “Redemption,” argued that the Reconstruction governments were corrupt, costly and imposed from outside, and demanded what they called home rule.

Critics then and now

Black leaders, Radical Republicans and most modern historians emphasize that Democrats regained power in the South largely through intimidation and violence, that the promised protections were not honored, and that withdrawal opened the way to disfranchisement and segregation. Historians also debate whether an explicit “Compromise of 1877” bargain was ever struck, or whether the outcome reflected a broader Northern retreat.

Sources

  1. Rutherford B. Hayes: Campaigns and Elections · Miller Center, University of Virginia
  2. Reconstruction: A Resource Guide · Library of Congress

Images

Archival image collections. Rights are checked item by item before anything is reproduced on this site.

Sources

  1. Civil War and Reconstruction: 1851–1877 · U.S. Senate
  2. Emancipation Proclamation (1863) · National Archives
  3. Black Soldiers in the U.S. Military During the Civil War · National Archives
  4. The Civil Rights Bill of 1866 · U.S. House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives
  5. Impeachment Trial of President Andrew Johnson, 1868 · U.S. Senate
  6. “The Fifteenth Amendment in Flesh and Blood:” 1870–1901 · U.S. House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives
  7. Ulysses S. Grant: Domestic Affairs · Miller Center, University of Virginia
  8. Rutherford B. Hayes: Campaigns and Elections · Miller Center, University of Virginia

Related

Continue in the Archive

All erasPresidentsDocuments libraryThe Atlas