Reconstruction Era: President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Amnesty Act into law, restoring full civil and political rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathizers.

The Reconstruction era, often simply called Reconstruction, was a period in United States history that followed the American Civil War (1861–1865) and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the abolition of slavery and federal control over, and reintegration of, the former…