Reconstruction Era | From the Ashes of War | ...

In December 1865, the first postwar Congress convened in Washington, D.C. With Black Southerners still facing rampant violence and discrimination, the Republican majority blocked the former Confederate states from rejoining the Union.Determined to protect Black rights and curb th ...  Show more

In the spring of 1867, over President Andrew Johnson’s veto, the Republican-controlled Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, putting the U.S. Army in control of the South and giving Black Southerners expanded political rights. For the first time they organized and attended pol ...  Show more

When Andrew Johnson became president in 1865, the United States was in the midst of one of its most volatile chapters. The country was divided after fighting a bloody civil war and had just experienced the first presidential assassination. We look at how these factors led to the ...  Show more

May 10, 1865. Jefferson Davis is awakened by gunshots. The president of the defeated and disbanded Confederate States of America is on the run, and today, federal troops finally catch him. His arrest puts the face of the Confederacy behind bars. But it also creates a problem for ...  Show more

On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War had ended and that the enslaved were now free. President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had been issued over two years earlier, and the South had ...  Show more

On this episode of Our American Stories, the Civil War was over, the city of Washington was in celebration and President Lincoln's life was about to take a happy and hopeful turn. His short, happy life was thwarted by John Wilkes Booth. Support the show ( https://www.ouramericanst ...  Show more