Introduction

Shortly after Lee's surrender, President Andrew Johnson officially recognized the return of white-only civilian governments in the eleven states of the former Confederacy and declared the rebellion in the South at an end. But Congress developed grave misgivings about those so-called Johnsonian governments in the South, which were passing Black Codes and otherwise trampling on the rights of former slaves. Congress responded in 1866 by proposing the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which was designed primarily to protect the civil rights of the freed people. Only Tennessee among the former Confederate states was willing to ratify the amendment. In the face of continued recalcitrance and race rioting, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which carved the remaining ten former Confederate states into five military districts and mandated the creation of new state governments in which African Americans would be fully participating voters, and hence, hopefully, able to participate in the determination of their own future. The first map in this module delineates the military districts established by the Reconstruction Act of 1867. The second map depicts the duration of the Radical state governments established in the South after 1867 under the terms of that act.