ARTICLES

After the Civil War, the United States faced the difficult task of rebuilding the South and defining freedom for millions of formerly enslaved people. Explore Reconstruction's constitutional changes, political advances, resistance, and unfinished legacy.

The Emancipation Proclamation changed the course of the Civil War, but it did not immediately free every enslaved person in the United States. Learn what Lincoln's 1863 proclamation did, where it applied, and why its limitations matter.