Reconstruction era of the United States in the context of "Moderate Republicans (Reconstruction era)"

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. government agency of early post American Civil War Reconstruction, assisting freedmen (i.e., former enslaved people) in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865, and operated briefly as a federal agency after the War, from 1865 to November 1872, to direct provisions, clothing, and fuel for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children.

The Territory of Colorado was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from February 28, 1861, until August 1, 1876, when it was admitted to the Union as the 38th State of Colorado.

The territory was organized in the wake of the Pike's Peak Gold Rush of 1858–1862, which brought the first large concentration of white settlement to the region. The organic legislative act creating the free Territory of Colorado was passed by the United States Congress and signed by 15th President James Buchanan into law on February 28, 1861. This was during the onset of the American Civil War of April 1861 to June 1865. The boundaries of the newly designated Colorado Territory were essentially identical with those of the modern State of Colorado, with lands taken from the four surrounding previous Federal territories of Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, and Utah established during the 1850s. The organization of the new territory helped solidify Union control over the mineral-rich area of the western Rocky Mountains. Statehood was regarded as fairly imminent with the expected growth in the constantly westward moving population, but the local territorial ambitions for full statehood were thwarted at the end of the war in 1865 by a constitutional veto by newly sworn in 17th President Andrew Johnson (1808–1875, served 1865–1869), who was a War Democrat who succeeded to the office after briefly only serving one month as Vice President after Lincoln's assassination that April. Statehood for the territory was a recurring issue during the subsequent Ulysses S. Grant presidential administration, with Republican 18th President Grant advocating statehood against a less willing Congress during the following post-war Reconstruction era (1865–1877). After a long constant lobbying campaign, the old Colorado Territory finally ceased to exist after only 15 years when the State of Colorado was admitted to the Union as the 38th state during the American Centennial celebration in August 1876.

The Redeemers were a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction Era that followed the American Civil War. Redeemers were the Southern wing of the Democratic Party. They sought to regain their political power and enforce white supremacy. Their policy of Redemption was intended to oust the Radical Republicans, a coalition of freedmen, "carpetbaggers", and "scalawags". They were typically led by White yeomen and dominated Southern politics in most areas from the 1870s to 1910.

During Reconstruction, the South was under occupation by federal forces, and Southern state governments were dominated by Republicans, elected largely by freedmen and allies. Republicans nationally pressed for the granting of political rights to the newly freed slaves as the key to their becoming full citizens and the votes they would cast for the party. The Thirteenth Amendment (banning slavery), Fourteenth Amendment (guaranteeing the civil rights of former slaves and ensuring equal protection of the laws), and Fifteenth Amendment (prohibiting the denial of the right to vote on grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude), enshrined such political rights in the Constitution.

Texas v. White, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 700 (1869), was a case argued before the Supreme Court of the U.S. in 1869. The case's notable political dispute involved a claim by the Reconstruction era government of Texas that U.S. bonds owned by Texas since 1850 had been illegally sold by the Confederate state legislature during the American Civil War. The state filed suit in the U.S. Supreme Court, given that, under the Constitution, that institution has original jurisdiction on certain cases in which a state is a party.

In accepting original jurisdiction, the court ruled that, legally speaking, Texas was and remained a state of the United States ever since it first joined the Union in 1845, despite it later purporting to join the Confederate States of America and despite it being under military rule at the time of the decision in the case. In deciding the merits of the bond issue, the court further held that the Constitution did not permit states to unilaterally secede from the United States, and that the ordinances of secession, and all the acts of the legislatures within seceding states intended to give effect to such ordinances, were "absolutely null". The purported bond sale during the civil war was thus void and the reconstructed Texas remained the legal owner.

In United States history, scalawag (sometimes spelled scallawag or scallywag) was a pejorative slur that referred to white Southerners who supported Reconstruction policies and efforts after the conclusion of the American Civil War.

As with the term carpetbagger, the word has a long history of use as a slur in Southern partisan debates. The post-Civil War opponents of the scalawags claimed they were disloyal to traditional values and white supremacy. Scalawags were particularly hated by 1860s–1870s Southern Democrats, who called Scalawags traitors to their region, which was long known for its widespread chattel slavery of Black people. Before the American Civil War, most Scalawags had opposed southern states' declared secession from the United States to form the Confederate States of America.

Benjamin Grubb Humphreys (August 26, 1808 – December 20, 1882) was an American politician from Mississippi. He was a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War and served as Governor of Mississippi from 1865 to 1868, during Reconstruction.