The Nation | Unconventional Wisdom Since 1865

The 1860s
Reconstruction fails to rebuild a divided Nation
	The 1870s

July 6, 1865 Browse by year: 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 The second half of the 1860s was not the time of healing that many hoped it would be. Though the disputes that caused the Civil War were no longer being settled by opposing armies, the meeting at Appomattox did not end any of the bitter disputes that divided the country. Nation reporters visiting the former Confederacy for a series of reports called "The South as it Is" found that despite President Andrew Johnson the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment prohibiting slavery, the country did little else to prepare the former slaves for freedom. To make matters worse, the Ku Klux Klan was formed in 1865 and began a reign of terror that lasted more than a hundred years. The freedmen weren't helped at all by a hostile President Johnson who repeatedly vetoed Republican-sponsored legislation to guarantee the freedmans' rights.In 1866, Johnson vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Act. The next year, he vetoed three Reconstruction acts. Though Congress overrode several of the vetoes, the two sides were on a collision course that culminated in an effort to impeach Johnson that in 1868. Though Johnson survived the vote, he was soon replaced by Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War hero who would demonstrate once again that skillful generalship on the battlefield is irrelevant in political warfare. Not all the news was bad. A "cold war" with Russia was averted when Secretary of State William Henry Steward purchased the Alaskan territory from Russia for $7.2 million. The women's suffrage movement was born by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and in 1869 the first professional base-ball team was born.