Use this Discovering American History video entitled Reconstruction 1863 to 1877 to study the Reconstruction Era as a conflict in three dimensions. The first dimension involved who was to conduct it, the executive or the legislative branch. This led to political battles between Johnson and the Radical Republicans. The second dimension was between Radical Republicans and a South still dominated by a planter elite that refused to be reconstructed. The third dimension of conflict was between black and white identified people of all social backgrounds, with the whites trying to diminish any gains of the former slaves by enacting Black Codes and condoning violence by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
Learn about Reconstruction 1863-1877.