Reconstruction Timeline
Reconstruction Timeline: 1863-1866
1863 |
January 1: President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that the majority of the nation’s slave population “henceforth shall be free.” July: In New York City, opposition to the nation’s first military draft triggers a riot, the largest in American history, as poor white Northerners protest being forced to fight to end slavery. Over four days, the insurrection develops into wholesale violence, with an uncounted number of victims. December 8: President Lincoln announces the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. It offers pardon and restoration of property — except slaves — to Confederates who swear allegiance to the |
1864 |
Early 1864: President Lincoln begins Reconstruction in the Union-occupied former Confederate state of July: In response to November 8: |
1865 |
By 1865, some 180,000 blacks have served in the Union Army, over one-fifth of the adult male black population under 45. January 16: Marching the Union Army through the South with an ever-growing number of freed slaves in its wake, General William Tecumseh Sherman issues Special Field Order 15, setting aside part of coastal January 31: The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery throughout the February 18: General Sherman’s troops enter Charleston, South Carolina. March: The temporary Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and April: In May: President Johnson announces his plan of Presidential Reconstruction. It calls for general amnesty and restoration of property — except for slaves — to all Southerners who will swear loyalty to the August/September: President Johnson shows growing leniency toward the white South: he orders the restoration of land to its former owners, including the land provided to freed slaves by General Sherman’s January field order. Freedmen are especially reluctant to leave the land they have started farming in Fall: Southern states elect former Confederates to public office at the state and national levels, drag their feet in ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, and refuse to extend the vote to black men. Southern legislatures begin drafting “Black Codes” to re-establish white supremacy. The laws impose restrictions on black citizens, especially in attempts to control labor: freedmen are prohibited from work except as field hands, blacks refusing to sign labor contracts can be punished, unemployed black men can be seized and auctioned to planters as laborers, black children can be taken from their families and made to work. The new laws amount to slavery without the chain. November-December: At the request of President Johnson, victorious Union general Ulysses S. Grant tours the South, and is greeted with surprising friendliness. His report recommends a lenient Reconstruction policy. December: President Johnson declares the reconstruction process complete. Outraged, Radical Republicans in Congress refuse to recognize new governments in Southern states. More than sixty former Confederates arrive to take their seats in Congress, including four generals, four colonels and six Confederate cabinet officers — even Alexander H. Stephens, the former vice president of the Confederacy. The Clerk of the House refuses to include the Southern representatives in his roll call, and they are denied their elected seats. The Union Army is quickly demobilized. From a troop strength of one million on May 1, only 152,000 Union soldiers remain in the South by the end of 1865. Southern towns and cities start to experience a large influx of freedmen. Over the next five years, the black populations of the South’s ten largest cities will double. |
1866 |
February: President Johnson vetoes a supplemental Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, which Republican moderates have designed to extend protection to Southern blacks. April: Another piece of moderate Republican legislation, 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.” It passes both houses of Congress by overwhelming majorities, and when President Johnson vetoes it, Congress overrides the veto, making the bill the first major piece of legislation enacted over a presidential veto. The rift between Congress and the president is complete. May 1: Racial violence rages in June 13: Congress sends the Fourteenth Amendment to the states. It writes the Republican vision of how post-Civil War American society should be structured into the U.S. Constitution, out of the reach of partisan politics. The amendment defines citizenship to include all people born or naturalized in the July: Congress re-passes its supplemental Freedmen’s Bureau Bill. President Johnson vetoes it again, and Congress again overrides the veto, making the bill a law. July 24: July 30: Riots break out in August 28: “The swing around the circle.” With Congress demanding that Southern states ratify the Fourteenth Amendment in order to gain re-admittance to the legislature, President Johnson begins a disastrous speaking tour of the North to bolster support for his policies in the mid-term elections. He asks popular Union general Ulysses S. Grant to come along. When crowds heckle the president, Johnson’s angry and undignified responses cause Grant — and many Northerners — to lose sympathy with the president and his lenient Reconstruction policies. Fall: Following the president’s ruinous campaign, the mid-term elections become a battleground over the Fourteenth Amendment and civil rights. Johnson’s opponents are victorious, and the Republicans occupy enough seats to guarantee they will be able to override any presidential vetoes in the coming legislative session. Union troops are further demobilized; only 38,000 remain in the South by the fall. |
Reconstruction Timeline: 1867-1877
1867 |
March 1: The North Carolina legislature holds a whiskey party when it adjourns before the state’s first election with black candidates. “We have lost all hope of escaping the vengeance of the Northern people,” one state senator writes, “and are preparing for the worst.” March 2: The new session of Congress begins to pass additional reconstruction laws, overriding President Johnson’s vetoes and beginning a more hard-line attitude toward the South. Known as Radical Reconstruction, the new policies divide the South into military districts and require the states to adopt new constitutions, introduce black suffrage, and ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. July 31: President Andrew Johnson tells Ulysses S. Grant that he intends to fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who has been a consistent opponent of the president and is close to the Radical Republicans who dominate Congress. August 11: Johnson orders Grant to take over the War Department temporarily. |
1868 |
January 14: Grant resigns his position as interim Secretary of War after Congress insists upon Winter: Black and white lawmakers begin to work side by side in the Southern states’ constitutional conventions, the first political meetings in American history to include substantial numbers of black men. May 16: Having infuriated the Republicans, Andrew Johnson becomes the first president to be impeached by a house of Congress, but he avoids conviction and retains his office by a single vote. He will not get the Democratic nomination in the upcoming presidential election. May 21: The Republican National Convention at Chicago nominates Grant for president and Schuyler Colfax of June 22: June 25: July 14: July 9: The Democrats nominate Horatio Seymour, former Governor of New York, for president, and Francis P. Blair, Jr., formerly one of Grant’s commanders, for vice president. July 28: The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, defining citizenship to include all people born or naturalized in the September: Black elected officials are ousted from the November 3: Grant is elected president, winning an electoral college majority of 214-80 over his Democratic opponent. But the popular majority is only 306,000 in a total vote of 5,715,000. Newly enfranchised black men in the South cast 700,000 votes for the Republican ticket. |
1869 |
The Freedmen’s Bureau tallies nearly 3,000 schools, serving over 150,000 students, in the South. February 26: Congress passes the Fifteenth Amendment, which attempts to address Southern poll violence by stating that the right to vote can not be denied on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” It is sent to the states for ratification. April: In its 5-3 September 24: Black Friday on the Fall: Violence against blacks continues throughout the South; in October, |
1870 |
January 10: Grant proposes a treaty of annexation with January 26: February 3: The 15th Amendment is ratified. February 23: March 30: July 15: |
1871 |
October: Congress hears testimony from victims of Klan violence. Grant cracks down on anti-black violence in |
1872 |
May 1: Meeting of the Liberal Republican Convention at May 22: Grant signs an amnesty bill he had advocated. Although the final legislation is less generous than Grant had wanted, now only a few hundred former Confederates are excluded from political privileges. June 5: The Republican Convention meets at September 5: The New York Sun charges that Vice President Colfax, Vice-Presidential nominee Henry Wilson, James Garfield, and other prominent politicians are involved in the operations of the Crédit Mobilier, a corporation established by the promoters of the Union Pacific railroad to siphon off the profits of transcontinental railroad construction. Ultimately, two congressmen will be censured for their part in the swindle and many other politicians will be damaged in reputation. November 5: Grant is reelected with an electoral college majority of 286-66, and a popular majority of 763,000. |
1873 |
Winter: Articles begin to appear in the New York Tribune, accusing black lawmakers in April 13: The Colfax Massacre. The White League, a paramilitary group intent on securing white rule in September 18: The panic of 1873 begins with the failure of a Wall Street banking firm, spreads to the stock exchange, and eventually leads to widespread unemployment. |
1874 |
Fall: The political tide has finally turned in the Democrats’ favor; they win control of Congress as stories of black political corruption, continued Southern violence, and a terrible economic depression occupy public attention. |
1875 |
March 1: As one of its last acts, the Republican-led Congress passes the Civil Rights Bill of 1875, prohibiting segregation in public facilities. The law will stand only until 1883, when the U.S. Supreme Court will strike it down. |
1877 |
March 4: Following a bitterly disputed presidential contest between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden, in which both candidates claim victory, Hayes is declared president. In a back-room political deal, the Republicans agree to abandon Reconstruction policies in exchange for the presidency. Reconstruction policies officially end. The South codifies and enforces segregation. Violations of black civil rights will not command national attention again until after World War II. |
Reconstruction: The Second Civil War – 1997-2004, PBS Online/WGBH