Curated playlist
Reconstruction era
- Fourteenth Amendment to the United States ConstitutionThe Fourteenth Amendment was written to bury the Dred Scott ruling.
- Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction eraLouisiana's Black voter rolls collapsed from 130,334 to 5,320 by 1900. A new 1898 constitution added a literacy test.
- Fifteenth Amendment to the United States ConstitutionThe Fifteenth Amendment split the women's suffrage movement in two. The rival groups stayed divided until the 1890s.
- Reconstruction AmendmentsAfter more than sixty years without change, the Constitution gained three amendments in five years.
- Radical RepublicansThe Radical Republicans impeached President Andrew Johnson and fell one Senate vote short of removing him.
- Compromise of 1877The Compromise of 1877 ended a disputed presidential election without a shot fired.
- Freedmen's BureauCongress ended the Freedmen's Bureau in 1872 while its head was out west. Its commissioner came back to find it gone.
- Thirteenth Amendment to the United States ConstitutionMississippi did not ratify the Thirteenth Amendment until 1995. The amendment ending slavery took effect in 1865.
- Reconstruction eraLincoln's death in 1865 left the country with no settled plan for bringing the South back.
- Lost Cause of the ConfederacyThe Lost Cause myth got its name when a publisher asked for a catchier title.
- Nadir of American race relationsBlack literacy kept rising even during the worst period for Black Americans after the Civil War.
- Republican Party (United States)The Republican Party was founded in 1854 to stop slavery from spreading. Lincoln won the presidency in 1860.