Marisol Sanchez-Matias
March 7, 2015
AP US History

Reconstruction is referred to the period in the United States history immediately following the Civil War in which the federal government set the conditions that would allow the rebellious Southern States back into the Union. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were reconstructed Amendments to the United States Constitution.

The Thirteenth Amendment is that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been dully convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their convinced. The Thirteenth Amendment was approved in January and then Ratified in December. The Thirteenth Amendment then abolished some slavery but not all of it. Which then the Thirteenth Amendment caused the following to happen, Lincoln’s Vice President Andrew Johnson became president after Lincoln’s assassination. Andrew Johnson was a racist, at first he also wanted to hang all the southerners. Johnson then caused Southern governments run by former confederate officials. Then Mississippi readmitted without accepting the Thirteenth Amendment causing “Black Codes” to be instituted. Black Codes were laws that passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War, laws had the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wage or debt. And because of Mississippi creating the “Black Codes”, Tennessee then created the group called the Ku Klux Klan also known as the KKK, which was a secret organization in the Southern United States, active for several years after the Civil War, which aimed to suspires the newly acquired powers of black and to oppose carpetbaggers from the North and which was responsible for many lawless and violent proceedings.

After Tennessee creating the Ku Klux Klan also known as the KKK, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. The Fourteenth Amendment was that all persons born in the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due to process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law. The Fourteenth Amendment was approved on June 13, 1866 and then was ratified on July 9, 1868. The Fourteenth Amendment then caused the following, after Andrew Johnson being in office for four years, Former Union General Ulysses S. Grant became president. Although he was allied with the Radical Republicans in Congress he does not provide strong leadership for Reconstruction. He was working to implement Congressional Reconstruction and to remove vestiges of slavery.

After Grant becoming president the Fifteenth Amendment got ratified. The Fifteenth Amendment was the right of all male citizen of the United States the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color,