Reconstruction Acts

American  

plural noun

1. U.S. History. the acts of Congress during the period from 1865 to 1877 providing for the reorganization of the former Confederate states and setting forth the process by which they were to be restored to representation in Congress, especially the acts passed in 1867 and 1868.

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Example Sentences

Congress passed, over President Andrew Johnson’s veto, the first of four Reconstruction Acts.

From Washington Times • Mar. 2, 2021

The Reconstruction Acts required the Southern states to ratify the 14th Amendment and give African Americans the vote before they’d be readmitted to the Union.

From Washington Post • May 16, 2018

Spring and Summer 1867 : Congress passes three radical Reconstruction Acts, dividing the Confederacy into military districts, and giving the military power over the judiciary and politics in the former Southern states.

From Slate • Oct. 27, 2017

Republicans saw this law, and three supplementary laws passed by Congress that year, called the Reconstruction Acts, as a way to deal with the disorder in the South.

From Textbooks • Dec. 30, 2014

The convention met in Atlanta on the 9th of December 1867 and by March 1868 had revised the constitution to meet the requirements of the Reconstruction Acts.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 7 "Geoponici" to "Germany" by Various