Reconstruction period.

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The reconstruction period denotes the era between 1865 to 1877 in which the United States faced severe economic, moral, and political implications of the just-ended Civil war. The war had left the country with a lot of issues to deal with, chief among them, slavery (Carson, Emma and Gary 100).
While the constitution did not explicitly declare slavery to be legal, it did not in any way prohibit it either. There were several clauses within that were exploited by the Southern states in justification of slavery. The Northern states were, however, against slavery, and this was a major cause of tension. Two factions, the radical and moderate Republicans, could not agree on the approach to ensuring that both the Confederacy and its abhorred slavery system ceased to exist. While the radicals advocated for a more direct method, the moderate Republicans clung to a more diplomatic system of eliminating slavery.
Despite the declaration of the abolishment of slavery, the southern states were not willing to oblige, in part because their governments did not feel like they ought to be taking orders from the federal government. This resulted into a more forceful approach by the North in which the southern governments were ousted by federal military forces and replaced by a radical Republican government constituting of Freedmen, Northern immigrants and sympathetic Southerners, the last two derogative referred to as Carpetbaggers and Scalawags respectively.

However, the war had left much of the south desolate: the economy was in bad shape, and employment opportunities were not forthcoming. The situation only got more volatile over time, with racially-motivated acts of violence erupting all over the country. Some former Confederate soldiers, definitely unhappy with the wave of change taking over the country, formed the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a racist and anti-communism sect that tortured and killed African-Americans and their sympathizers. It would take more than legislation to get the country on a definite path to social, economic and political recovery.

Work Cited
Carson, Claybourne, Emma J. Lapsansky-Werner and Gary B. Nash. The Struggle for Freedom: A History of African Americans. London: 2015. Print.