Dominic Sandbrook

And the 14th Amendment also guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law.

Again, what that means will be hotly contested in the years to come.

The radical Republicans tried to get rid of President Johnson.

They impeached him, and he survived by just one vote in the Senate.

So he's kind of clinging on.

But they have all the momentum now and all the power.

Between spring 1867 and early 1868, they went further and they passed four Reconstruction Acts that went way beyond not just Johnson's plans for the South, but almost certainly what Abraham Lincoln was planning for the South when he died in 1865.

So now, 1867-68, the entire former Confederacy, except for Tennessee, which has been readmitted to the Union, the entire former Confederacy is put under martial law and governed by the United States Army.

And elections will be held under military supervision so that black men can vote in them.

So in other words, they're basically saying it's two and a half years since the end of the war.

The South has proved incapable of behaving itself.

We are reimposing martial law.

Now, this is very exciting if you're a former slave.

Because now you have what looks like a guarantee that you will be able to exercise your right as an American citizen, if you're a man, and cast your vote.

And so there's a great rush to enrol in things like these union leagues and local republican organisations on the part of the freedmen, because they're like, brilliant, we can vote and nobody will stop us.

So when the southern states hold elections in the first half of 1868, the results very heavily favour

The Republican Party, right?

Abraham Lincoln's old party, the party of emancipation.

Yeah, of course.

And so that means that for the next two years, much of the South will be under Republican rule.