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How were the Southern states brought back into the Union?

The Southern states were brought back into the Union following the American Civil War (1861–65) as the result of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. These acts established the procedures for readmitting each of the Southern states to the Union. The legislation also called for the Southern states (except for Tennessee) to be divided into five military districts in which the authority of the army commander was supreme. In addition, the Reconstruction Acts required that each state rewrite its constitution (a document containing a set of laws) and ratify (approve) the Fourteenth Amendment. (This amendment made former slaves citizens of both the United States and the state where they lived; it further forbade states to deny equal rights to any person.) By the summer of 1868 the legislatures of seven of the eleven Southern states had met the...

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