The American Civil War: Pyrrhic Victory (Part 6)

Ford's Theatre, April 14th, 1865. Lincoln dies just as his political skill is most needed. Andrew Johnson catastrophically misunderstands what victory requires, allowing former Confederates to pass Black Codes recreating slavery in everything but name. Radical Reconstruction briefly creates multiracial democracy—Black men voting, holding office, attending school. The Ku Klux Klan responds with organized terror. The Compromise of 1877 abandons freedmen to the people who enslaved them. Th...