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Once upon a time, a very important person

was killed by a very evil person.   The man who was 

killed was President Abraham Lincoln.   The evil man 

was John Wilkes Booth. 

 Vice President Andrew Johnson took over. He 

wasn't as nice as Lincoln or Honest Abe would have 

been.   Before Abraham Lincoln died though, he 

managed to pass the 13th amendment. This made 

sure that White people wouldn't use Black people 

to do their work for them.

The South disagreed with the 13th amendment 

but were forced to go along with it.   Congress 

at the time was dominated by Republicans, 

people who were opposed to slavery and 

supported equal rights, because of this they 

were able to pass a 14th amendment, which 

made all people born in the United States 

equal rights and citizenship, except for Native 

Americans.

The Southern Governments were forced to draft 

new state governments to be represented in 

congress.   The creation of these governments were 

mostly by republicans, these republicans were 

mostly either poor white farmers or African 

Americans.   Over the course of reconstruction 

President Johnson had many fights with other 

officials.   This climaxed when the House of 

Representatives tried to impeach him, but he was 

not kicked out of the office. 

After being freed most of the slaves moved off 

of the plantations.   Even though they were 

freed they we still uneducated and unskilled, 

because of this they flocked to new school 

created for new freed slaves.  

 The next thing that african americans wanted was 

land.   It was rumored that they would all receive 40 

acres and a mule.   This rumor turned out to be false.  

Without new land many were forced to go back to 

plantations, but they worked as payed hands not 

slaves.   Without slavery it turned into the contact 

system.   These contracts were mostly terrible for the 

worker and they were often cheated out of benefits. 

Because of that many African Americans switched to 

the sharecropping system.   A system that an owner 

gave up part of his land for a share of the crops grown 

on it every year.

Some people who disagreed with African American 

Rights took it into their own hands. The Ku Klux 

Klan were a group of White Christian's who hated 

everyone who wasn't White or Christian.   These 

people were very violent burning the houses of 

African Americans. They would also beat and killed 

African Americans without a trial. This group is not 

as active but still around today. 

After Andrew Johnson finished his time as 

President there was a vote for the next one. 

This time Ulysses S. Grant won.   He was much 

nicer to the African Americans than Johnson 

was. President Grant created the 15th 

amendment which allowed slaves to vote. It 

did not however give women the right to vote, 

which angered many women rights activists 

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