This is definitely going to be a very interesting period of American history to learn about –for many its a forgotten time period. Lots of people think that after the Civil War, things were united and went back to “normal”, however, I’m sure we will learn in this chapter that this was far from the truth.

The time period before the Civil War where slavery was still legal.

This shows how Black Codes were meant to keep control and regulations over freedmen even after slavery ended. Even though some rights were given, the laws mostly limited their freedom.

How was president Abraham Lincoln able to piece back together the United States? After all the problems that was going on for years, it’s gonna take a long time to put it back together.

African Americans were probably very scared having a southerner come in to power right after Lincoln.

These so-called Lincoln governments sprang up in pockets where Union support existed like Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Unsurprisingly, these were also the places that were exempted from the liberating effects of the Emancipation Proclamation.

However, the proclamation freed only slaves in areas of rebellion and left more than seven hundred thousand in bondage in Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri as well as in Union-occupied areas of Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia.

The era witnessed perhaps the most open and widespread discussions of citizenship since the nation’s founding. It was a moment of revolutionary possibility and violent backlash. African Americans and Radical Republicans pushed the nation to finally realize the Declaration of Independence’s promises that “all men are created equal” and have “certain unalienable rights.”

He might as well have been talking about the entire antebellum way of life. The future of the South was uncertain. How would these states be brought back into the Union? Would they be conquered territories or equal states? How would they rebuild their governments, economies, and social systems? What rights did freedom confer on formerly enslaved people?

Contrabands,” Cumberland Landing, Virginia, 1862. Library of Congress.what does it mean and why.