Reconstruction Era

After the civil war was over, there was much reconstruction to do, mostly in the South. The South had endured much damage from the war but mainly because of Sherman's 40 mile wide march of destruction. Not only was there physical damage but also ecomonic damage to their government and emotional damage to the families who had lost loved ones to the war. Some how the North needed to get the South back into the government, since the South had ceceded from the states to form their own nation called the Confederate States. This was a problem though, because the South is very rebellious when it comes to being controlled. Lincoln had been assasinated before he could make that happen, so Andrew Johnson came in to fill his place and try to get the South to join with the North again.

During all this, the slaves had been freed. But again the South had figured out a way to control them. The way they pulled that off is by saying that the only way black people could vote is if they could read and write. The South pulled a fast one there. The freed slaves from the South had to pretty much start all over, but they couldn't just run to the North for help. The North was having their own problems with jobs and other things. Immigrants were coming in left and right trying to start a new life for them and their families. This caused a big problem for the former slaves, because the immigrants were getting the jobs and not them. The ones that did stay in the south either rented land or did a thing called share-cropping, which basically means that they shared a farm with another family or whatever the case may have been. Also, there was no education offered to the former slaves at that time, so they didn't really have a chance to learn how to read and write.