What was Reconstruction supposed to accomplish?

Reconstruction was supposed to accomplish three intertwined goals: rebuild the war-shattered South, restore the formerly Confederate states to the Union on terms acceptable to the federal government, and integrate roughly 4 million newly freed African Americans as full citizens with civil and political rights.

The first goal was physical and economic rebuilding. The Civil War had devastated the South. About 260,000 Confederate soldiers had died, perhaps a quarter of military age white southern men. Cities including Atlanta, Columbia, and Richmond had been burned. Plantations lay in ruins. Railroads, bridges, and infrastructure had been destroyed in many areas. The cotton crop of 1865 was the smallest in decades. The Confederate government's debt and currency were worthless, and southern banks had failed.

The Freedmen's Bureau established March 3, 1865 distributed food and clothing, established hospitals, founded thousands of schools, and helped formerly enslaved people locate lost family members. Northern philanthropic and missionary societies funded southern colleges including Howard University founded 1867, Atlanta University founded 1865, and Fisk University founded 1866. Public school systems for both races were established in southern states for the first time during Reconstruction.

The second goal was restoring the southern states to the Union. President Andrew Johnson's plan in 1865 to 1866 sought rapid restoration with minimal conditions, but Congress rejected it. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 to 1868 imposed military government, required new state constitutions providing for Black male suffrage, and required ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. By 1870 all former Confederate states had been readmitted under Republican-led governments.

The third goal was integration of formerly enslaved people as citizens. The Thirteenth Amendment ratified December 6, 1865 ended slavery. The Civil Rights Act of April 9, 1866 declared all persons born in the United States to be citizens with full civil rights. The Fourteenth Amendment ratified July 9, 1868 enshrined birthright citizenship and equal protection. The Fifteenth Amendment ratified February 3, 1870 prohibited racial discrimination in voting.

About 2,000 Black men held public office during Reconstruction, including U.S. senators Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi and 16 congressmen. Black voters constituted majorities in some southern states.

The Reconstruction effort was incomplete in important respects. Land redistribution was largely abandoned despite the famous "40 acres and a mule" Special Field Order of January 16, 1865 by William T. Sherman, leaving most freedpeople economically dependent on white planters through sharecropping and tenant farming. Federal commitment waned after the Panic of 1873, and the Compromise of 1877 ended military occupation. Within three decades, southern states would systematically disenfranchise Black voters and impose Jim Crow segregation, undoing much of Reconstruction's political achievement.