What happened to the country after the Civil War ended?
Reconstruction's Long Road
What happened to the country after the Civil War ended?
In 1865, the long and painful American Civil War finally ended. The guns went quiet, and a worn-out country had to ask itself a brand-new question: now what? A nation that had nearly split in two had to figure out how to become one whole thing again. Historians call the messy, hopeful, complicated years that followed Reconstruction — the great rebuilding.
The very biggest change came first. The war had ended slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment made it the law of the land. Around four million people who had been enslaved were now free. Free to move, to marry, to keep their own wages, to look for family members sold away years before.
