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The Founders' Library

Civil War and Reconstruction

The Historic Documents in this set cover the Civil War and Reconstruction from 1861 to 1877.  During this period, Americans engaged in a bloody Civil War and debated how best to reconstruct the nation to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence. These debates culminated in our nation’s first civil rights laws and the ratification of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.  Many scholars refer to this period as America’s “Second Founding.

Selected by
Allen C. Guelzo

Director, Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship, James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University

Darrell A.H. Miller

Melvin G. Shimm Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law

Civil War and Reconstruction Documents
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union (1861)

State of Mississippi | 1861
First Inaugural Address and Message to the Special Session of the 37th Congress (1861)

Abraham Lincoln | 1861
Contemporary Documents on the District Emancipation Bill (1862)

Various | 1862
District of Columbia Emancipation Act 1862

Congress | 1862
Homestead Act, “An Act to Secure Homesteads to Actual Settlers on the Public Domain” (1862)

Congress | 1862
Emancipation Proclamation (1863)

Abraham Lincoln | 1863
Retaliation Order (1863)

Abraham Lincoln | 1863
Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, “An Act to establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees” (1865)

Congress | 1865
Equal Suffrage: Address from the Colored Citizens of Norfolk, Va. to the People of the United States (1865)

Colored Citizens of Norfolk, Va. | 1865
Black Codes (1865)

Mississippi and South Carolina | 1865
Report on the Condition of the South (1865)

Carl Schurz | 1865
Civil Rights Act of 1866, “An Act to protect all Persons in the United States in their Civil Rights, and furnish the Means of their Vindication”

Congress | 1866
Harpers’ Weekly, “The Massacre in New Orleans,” (1866)

Harpers’ Weekly | 1866
“Reconstruction” in Atlantic Monthly 18 (1866)

Frederick Douglass | 1866
Reconstruction Acts (1867-1868)

Congress | 1868
Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, “An Act to enforce the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and for other Purposes”

Congress | 1871
Civil Rights Act of 1875, “An Act to Protect All Citizens in Their Civil and Legal Rights”

Congress | 1875
Narrative of Sojourner Truth, “Washington Streetcar System,” (1881)

Sojourner Truth | 1881
Political Recollections, 1840-1872 (1884)

George Washington Julian | 1884
“After the War,” Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S.C. Volunteers (1902)

Susie King Taylor | 1902
Additional Documents Selected By The NCC
The Gettysburg Address (1863)

Abraham Lincoln | 1863
Second Inaugural Address (1865)

Abraham Lincoln | 1865
Speech Introducing the Fourteenth Amendment (1866)

Thaddeus Stevens | 1865
Speech Introducing the Fourteenth Amendment to the Senate (1866)

Jacob Howard | 1866
One Country, One Constitution, One People (1866)

John Bingham | 1866
We Are All Bound Up Together (1866)

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper | 1866
Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction (1866)

| 1866
One Man Power vs. Congress (1866)

Charles Sumner | 1866
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