United States History Student Edition

The South in Ruins The Civil War brought devastation to many Southern cities. The Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, shown here, lay in ruins. The Union army tore up railroads, killed livestock, and burned farms all across the South. More lives were lost in the Civil War than in any other conflict in U.S. history.

Reconstruction and African Americans During the early years of Reconstruction, African Americans in the South gained political power. Thousands of African Americans were elected to offices in state legislatures and in both houses of Congress. Many Southern whites, however, opposed the empowerment of African Americans. This opposition often took the form of intimidation and violence by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White League.

» Some white Southerners formed hate groups to violently intimidate and oppress African Americans, as shown in this political cartoon from 1874.

“ If you call this Freedom, what do you call Slavery?” — Kentucky Freedman to the Secretary of War, May 14, 1866

PHOTO: (t)Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division [LC-DIG-ppmsca-08230]; (bl) Everett Historical/Shutterstock; (br)Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZC2-2325]; TEXT: Henry Mars to Secretary Stanton, 14 May 1866, M-240 1866, Letters Received, series 15, Washington Headquarters, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, & Abandoned Lands, Record Group 105, National Archives. In Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. Series 3: Vol. 2. Land and Labor, 1866-1867. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.

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