ABSTRACT
In December 1863 Abraham Lincoln issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction which offered to restore “all rights of property, except as to slaves,” to those who had supported the Confederacy. As Lincoln’s December 1863 Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction implied, reconstruction of the South would be required after a Union victory. Congressional legislation supporting Reconstruction also included the 1875 Civil Rights Act, which required equal access to public accommodations, as well as laws prohibiting interference with African Americans’ exercise of their civil rights, such as voting. When the federal government ended its enforcement of Reconstruction reforms, most of them, save the formal end to chattel slavery, were reversed. The former slaves had been led to understand that the lands they had been allocated during the Civil War would remain theirs. Political reconstruction of the South required the economic independence of its ordinary citizens from the former slaveholders, and that required a more equitable distribution of Southern land.
