The American Civil War ended in 1865, and a new conflict immediately began.

The North won the first war.

The South won the second.

To truly understand American history, one needs to understand how this happened and why.

The years immediately following the end of the Civil War, 1865 to 1877, are known in

American history as reconstruction.

What should have been a glorious chapter in America's story?

The full integration of 3.9 million freed slaves, instead became a shameful one.

It began with the assassination of Republican President Abraham Lincoln.

One week after the Civil War effectively ended, the one man with the political savvy and

shrewdness to have guided reconstruction was gone.

His successor was Vice President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat.

Johnson was the rare Southern politician who stayed loyal to the Union during the Civil

War.

Lincoln added him to his re-election ticket in 1864 as a gesture of wartime bipartisanship,

but Johnson was wholly unprepared for the task.

Under his reconstruction plan, the defeated rebels would be allowed to return to power,

almost as if they had never left.

The only requirement to rejoin the Union was that they agreed to ratify the 13th Amendment

that abolished slavery.

This was fine with the old Southern Democratic ruling class.

By agreeing to abolish slavery, they would actually increase their political power.

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