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Reconstruction It was 1865, the Civil War had ended and President Abraham Lincoln has been assassinated. Lincoln had been the moderator between the extreme beliefs of the Republican majority in Congress and the liberal ideas of the Democrats or Confederate sympathizers. None the less Reconstruction needed to begin as soon as possible. The South needed to be rebuilt, economically as well as geographically; the Union would have to readmit all former Confederate states in order for …

…moved to the South and gotten elected to political positions in the Reconstruction governments sought only to plunder southern treasuries. Southerners were very unwilling to accept any form of government in which blacks and northerners played an important role. They attempted to disrupt the Reconstruction governments with violence and through intimidation. The North eventually grew tired of trying to impose Reconstruction by force, and by 1877 white southerners had regained control of all their state governments.