Reconstructed America

The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the ten states of the Deep South into military districts under martial law. An army general overseeing each district was charged with securing a new electorate, enrolling former slaves, and disfranchising former rebels for the purpose of providing for more efficient government in the former rebel states.

Resources:

• Digital History America's reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War
• From Fordham University: a collection of resources for US Civil War
• From Library of Congress: Reconstruction and Its Aftermath
• From PBS American Experience: Reconstruction: the Second Civil War
• Harper's Weekly Reports, 1857-1874
  For over a quarter of a century Harper's Weekly captured the lion's share of the national newspaper audience. Materials from the magazine are presented in order to give a true historical picture of the leading 19th-century newspaper's view of black Americans.
• From the Gilder Lehrman Institute: Civil War & Reconstruction, 1861-1877
• Through the Lens of Time: Images of African Americans
  This Web site is a joint project between VCU Libraries and the Valentine Richmond History Center and provides nearly 300 photographs of African American life in turn-of-the-century Central Virginia from the 1860s to the 1930s.

Massachusetts was a major area for the anti-slavery movement before the Civil War and during the war The state also made important contributions to relief efforts. Many leaders of nursing and soldiers' aid organizations hailed from Massachusetts, including Dorothea Dix, founder of the Army Nurses Bureau, Henry Whitney Bellows, founder of the United States Sanitary Commission, and independent nurse Clara Barton.