Abolition of slavery, black citizenship and suffrage, and restoring the Union sorely strained post–Civil War society. The main actors were blacks, a vast majority ex-slaves; white allies, mainly northern missionaries and Republicans; and freedpeople's enemies, notably southern Democrats.

Blacks determined to “secure the blessings of liberty.” As former Confederate states enacted laws to subjugate them, freedmen and women registered their marriages, reclaimed sold-away family members, formed protective associations, sent their children to old Sabbath and new Freedmen's Bureau Schools, and worked. Few freedpeople could rent or buy farmland; most contracted with planters to work for half the crop. Bureau agents oversaw labor relations while army patrols helped protect blacks from harassment and violence by diehards such as the Ku Klux Klan. Freedpeople, pursuing better livelihoods, engaged a growing black world of enterprises, churches, schools, fraternal orders, women's clubs, and civic organizations in the South and nation. Freedmen also rallied in branches of the Republican-backed Union League. About 660,000 white and 703,400 black men qualified to vote in 1867. Black votes also insured victory for many white and black Republican candidates in 1868 and after. Blacks comprised nearly 60% of the population in South Carolina; over 50% in Mississippi and Louisiana; 40% to 50% in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Virginia; 33% in North Carolina; and 25% to 33% in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Texas.

Until 1877, probably 2,000 black Republicans “had held federal, state, and local public offices, ranging from member of Congress to justice of the peace” (Foner, 1993, p. xi). Most were literate; one sample (714) showed more than half (387) to be slave-born. Many were Union veterans, militiamen, clergymen, educators, farmers, and artisans. Congress seated 16, including Hiram R. Revels and Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi as Senators. South Carolina ranked first in the number of black congressmen (6) and officeholders (316). Pinckney B. S. Pinchback was governor of Louisiana from December 9, 1872 to January 13, 1873. Local and state officials, in spite of Democrats’ attacks, pushed their communities’ justice in schooling, work contracts, renting and buying land, physical protection, poor relief, and public jobs. Calling for equity in economics, education, law, and politics, they echoed the priorities of black leaders nationally not only among politicians but lawyers, ministers, teachers, trade unionists, women activists, and Negro nationalists too.