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Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is a clause within the text of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State [...] deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". A…

The Reconstruction Era (1863-1877): The Great Rebuilding

The Reconstruction Era is the period (1865-1877) during which the states that had seceded to the Confederacy were controlled by the federal government before being readmitted to the Union. The attempts to reunite the Union and the Confederacy while dismantling the legal and economic system of slavery were met with…

Andrew Johnson’s Vision of Reconstruction

Following the Civil War, the North was determined to help the South rebuild, leading to the period of Reconstruction (1865-1877) during which the states that had seceded to the Confederacy were controlled by the federal government before being readmitted to the Union. However, Abraham Lincoln and his successor, Andrew Johnson, had…

Radical Republicans in the Reconstruction Era

Hiram Revels of Mississippi was elected Senator and six other African Americans were elected as Congressmen from other southern states during the Radical Republicans Reconstruction era. Radical Republicans and Reconstruction These policies were not severe enough for the Radical Republicans, a faction of the Republican Party that favored a stricter…

14th Amendment: A Simplified Description

The 14th Amendment simplified is the amendment to the Constitution of the United States that granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and slaves who had been emancipated after the American Civil War, including them under the umbrella phrase “all persons born or naturalized in the…

The “Carpetbagger” Era: Post-Civil War Tensions Between North and South

A "carpetbagger" was a derogatory term applied by former Confederates to any person from the Northern United States who came to the Southern states after the American Civil War during the period dubbed Radical Reconstruction. Carpetbagger Definition US History A great many contemporary observers believed that the real purpose behind…