A History of the Civil Rights Movement

HOW THE MOVEMENT BEGAN

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states that remained in the United States), the country would be reunited. And the 4 million African Americans held in slavery would be freed. The Civil War was the bloodiest conflict in American history. In four years of fighting, more than 600,000 men would lose their lives from all causes. These included almost 40,000 black soldiers. They were among the 180,000 African Americans who had joined the Union army to fight for the cause of freedom. The Civil War finally ended in 1865. The Union had won, and much of the South was in ruins. RECONSTRUCTION On April 14, 1861, less than a week after the surrender of the largest Confederate army, an assassin shot President Lincoln. The president died the following day. Upon Lincoln’s death, Vice President Andrew Johnson became presi dent. Johnson, a southerner from Tennessee, would be in charge of manag ing Reconstruction. This was the name given to the reorganization of the defeated Confederate states. One of the first and most important tasks of Reconstruction was to offi cially abolish slavery. This was done by means of the Thirtenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Ratified, or formally adopted, in December 1865, it banned slavery and “involuntary servitude.” But by 1866, all the states of the former Confederacy had moved to enact “Black Codes.” These laws severely restricted the rights of African Americans in the South. In some states, for example, former slaves were required to sign annual labor contracts that committed them to working from sunup to sundown, six days a week, on a plantation. Wages were very low. African Americans who didn’t sign a labor contract could be arrested and auctioned off to a planter. Those who left their plantation without per mission could also be arrested. Black children could be taken from their families to work. President Johnson saw nothing wrong with the Black Codes. Johnson wanted to limit the influence of newly freed slaves. “White men alone must