Existing comment:
1862 Homestead Act:
The Homestead Act, which grants 160-acre portions of public land to settlers, will lead thousands of white Americans to occupy Indian lands in the Midwest.
1865 Slavery ends:
The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution is formally ratified, outlawing slavery and involuntary servitude "except as a punishment for crime [of which] the party shall have been duly convicted."
1866 Civil Rights Act:
Citizenship is granted to all people born in the US, regardless of race, color or previous status. Chiefly aimed at African Americas, the law includes the rights to make contracts, to buy and sell land, to give evidence in court and to sue and be sued. But it does not include the right to vote.
"Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot."
-- Frederick Douglass, 1865
1868 Fourteenth Amendment:
The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution forbids states from depriving "any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person with its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
1870 Fifteenth Amendment:
African-American men receive the right to vote. But poll taxes, literacy tests and threats of violence, including lynching, keep many away from the ballot ox until the mid-20th century. |