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What was Reconstruction?

Reconstruction was the twelve-year period (1865–77) of rebuilding that followed the American Civil War (1861–65), a conflict between the United States (the Union; states mostly located in the North) and states in the South (the Confederacy). On April 9, 1865, Confederate general Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) surrendered his troops to Union general Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) at old Appomattox Court House, Virginia. This surrender brought an end to a war that had caused more American deaths than any other armed conflict in U.S. history. The South was also in ruins as a result of the war. Food and other supplies were scarce, people were homeless, city centers had been destroyed, schools were demolished, railways were torn up, and government was nonexistent. The U.S. government not only had to decide how to restore the South, but it now had to give full rights to new citizens—the freed slaves....

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