Debating Reconstruction. "The absolute equality of all men before the law, the only true basis of Reconstruction" ; Prospects of the freedmen of Hilton Head ; Thaddeus Stevens: speech to Congress ; Alexander Stephens: "On Reconstruction" ; Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction ; "The one man power vs. Congress" ; Frederick Douglass: "Reconstruction"
Communities in need. Letter from black soldiers of North Carolina to the Freedmen's Bureau commissioner ; Address of a convention of Negroes held in Alexandria, VA ; "The education of the freedmen" ; Letters from Louisiana ; Letter from Roanoke Island ; The sad state of Indian affairs
Acts of state. The Freedmen's Bureau Bill ; Civil Rights Act of 1866 ; First Reconstruction Act ; Second Reconstruction Act ; Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution ; Articles of Impeachment against President Andrew Johnson ; President Grant's First Inaugural Address
Black codes and white lives. Mississippi Black Code ; Louisiana Black Code ; Letter to T.P. Chandler ; "A long silence" ; From Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation since the War
Extreme reactions. Notice from the Ku Klux Klan to Davie Jeems ; "The first-class men in our town" ; Letter to Senator Joseph C. Abbott on the Ku Klux Klan ; A contested election: report to Congress on the activities of the Ku Klux Klan ; From Recollections of the Inhabitants, Localities, Superstitions, and Ku Klux Outrages of the Carolinas, by a "Carpet-Bagger" who was born and lived there
Reconstruction moves ahead. "The North owes the colored race a deep obligation" ; Letter to Republican senators and representatives ; "A plea for general amnesty" ; "Half free, half slave" ; Civil Rights Act of 1875
An ambiguous legacy. United States v. Cruikshank ; Blanche Bruce: speech in the Senate ; Freedmen's Monument speech ; Ulysses S. Grant: letter to Daniel H. Chamberlain ; Sharecropping contract.