Reconstruction People

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was the sixteenth president of the United States during one of the most consequential periods in American history, the Civil War. Before being elected president, Lincoln...

Andrew Johnson (1808-1875) became America's seventeenth president in April 1865, upon the death of Abraham Lincoln. Though most people recognize that Congress fabricated the charges against him, Jo...

Oliver O. Howard (1830-1909) served as chief commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau (formally established as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands) at the request of President Johnson...

Hiram Revels (1822-1901) was the first black citizen to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Born to free parents in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Revels had to go to Indiana and Illinois to obtain an ed...

Blanche K. Bruce (1841-1898) was a black senator representing Mississippi during Reconutruction, becoming the first African-American politician ever to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate (1875-18...

Pinckney B.S. Pinchback (1837-1921) was the first black governor in the United States, serving as chief executive of Louisiana in 1872 and '73. There would not be another black governor of any Amer...

Thaddeus Stevens (1792-1868) was the most famous Radical Republican in the House of Representatives (1849-53, 1859-68). Together with Charles Sumner in the Senate, the Pennsylvania native opposed P...

Charles Sumner (1811-74), a Senator from Massachusetts for more than twenty years (1851-74), was the leader of the Radical Republicans in the Senate and a lifelong proponent of social equality for...

William T. Sherman (1820-1891) was a Union general in the American Civil War and one of the greatest of the Civil War generals. His middle name was Tecumseh, for the famous Shawnee chief.Prior to t...

Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) served as commander in chief of the Union army during the Civil War, leading the North to victory over the Confederacy. Grant later became the eighteenth President of t...

Frederick Douglass (c.1817-1895), born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, was a runaway slave, a supporter of women's rights, and probably the most prominent abolitionist and human rights leader...

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) was co-leader of the American suffrage movement along with her good friend and colleague, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was also an advocate for abolition and temperance....

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) was co-leader of the American suffrage movement along with her good friend and colleague, Susan B. Anthony. Stanton was the more talented orator, while Anthony wa...

Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) was the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. After a distinguished career in national politics as Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce, Davis...

Alexander Stephens (1812-1883) was a politician who served in the Georgia legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before the American Civil War. Throughout his career, Stephens defended s...

Horace Greeley (1811-1872) was a prominent American newspaper editor and founder of the New York Tribune. He was the first (and last) presidential candidate of the short-lived Liberal Republican pa...

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-1893) was the nineteenth president of the United States, from 1877-1881. His controversial and extremely close election became known as the Compromise of 1877, or alternat...

Samuel J. Tilden (1814-1886), a New York Democrat, ran against Republican Rutherford B. Hayes for the presidency in 1876 and won the popular vote by a very small margin. He was denied the office af...

Lyman Trumbull (1813-1896) was a Republican Senator (originally a Democrat) from Illinois who helped lead the Liberal Republican Party in 1872. He then returned to being a Democrat.Trumbull avidly...

Albion W. Tourgée (1838-1905) waged a courageous battle against the Ku Klux Klan during his term as a North Carolina judge during Reconstruction. In his judicial district, located in the centr...