View source for Reconstruction

Reconstruction’ the name of Government policy to resolve the issues of the Civil War after the Confederacy was defeated and slavery ended. Reconstruction addressed how former secessionist states would return to the Union and the constitutional and legal status of the former slaves. The Union troops were received by the disgruntled white community with thinly disguised hostility and mainly acted in a policing role rounding up members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations.