1. The period of reconstruction was the time from 1865 till 1877, characterized by readjustment which came after the Civil War. The Civil War resulted in ruining the South. The economics and social order of the country was based on slavery, and after it was ruined, there were no variants of another order to replace it. The 11 Confederate states still needed their governments in order to get their positions in the Union. The restoration was begun by President Lincoln before the end of the war. His task was to create a strong Republican party in the South, the first steps were to issue “a proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction for those areas of the Confederacy occupied by Union armies” (3). With the help of these documents all Confederates got the right to swear to support the Constitution and the Union. Lincoln received little support from congress in this matter and he put veto on their Wade-Davis Bill and wanted to fulfill his own plan. However at the end of the war, the representatives from Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee and Virginia were not accepted by Congress and didn’t get the places of Senators.
Andrew Johnson supported at the beginning the punishment of rebellious regions. He “disenfranchised all former military and civil officers of the Confederacy and all those who owned property worth $20,000 or more and made their estates liable to confiscation.” (3). The main goal was to take the political control from aristocrats in South and give it to the smaller farmers. In the year 1965 Johnson started to fulfil his plan. The Thirteenth Amendment was supposed to provide complete freedom for black people, but in reality the control of white over them was not destroyed. In the year 1867, Congress issued the Reconstruction Act, which was followed by three more acts, The South was divided into five military regions with army commanders.
