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• reconstruction
  reconstruction

  noun

  the act of reconstructing, rebuilding, or reassembling, or the state of being reconstructed.
• Reconstruction
  Reconstruction

  noun

  history the period after the Civil War when the South was reorganized and reintegrated into the Union (1865–77)

reconstruction

American  

[ree-kuhn-struhk-shuhn] / ˌri kənˈstrʌk ʃən /

noun

• reconstructions
  plural

1. the act of reconstructing, rebuilding, or reassembling, or the state of being reconstructed.

   the gigantic task of reconstruction after a fire.

2. something reconstructed, rebuilt, or reassembled.

   a reconstruction of the sequence of events leading to his death; accurate reconstructions of ancient Greek buildings.

3. (initial capital letter)

   1. the process by which the states that had seceded were reorganized as part of the Union after the Civil War.

   2. the period during which this took place, 1865–77.

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Reconstruction British  

/ ˌriːkənˈstrʌkʃən /

noun

1. history the period after the Civil War when the South was reorganized and reintegrated into the Union (1865–77)

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Reconstruction Cultural  

1. The period after the Civil War in which the states formerly part of the Confederacy were brought back into the United States. During Reconstruction, the South was divided into military districts for the supervision of elections to set up new state governments. These governments often included carpetbaggers, as former officials of the Confederacy were not allowed to serve in them. The new state governments approved three amendments to the Constitution: the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment, which had a provision keeping some former supporters of the Confederacy out of public office until Congress allowed them to serve; and the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed voting rights for black men. Once a state approved the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, it was to be readmitted to the United States and again represented in Congress. The official end of Reconstruction came in 1877, when the last troops were withdrawn from the South.

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Discover More

The program established for Reconstruction, largely the work of Republicans in the North, was far more severe than what President Abraham Lincoln had proposed before his assassination. Large numbers of white southerners resented being kept out of the “healing” of the nation that Lincoln had called for and were unwilling to give up their former authority. Ill feeling by former Confederates during Reconstruction led to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and a long-standing hatred among southerners for the Republican party.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• pre-Reconstruction
  noun
• self-reconstruction
  noun
• reconstructional
  adjective
• reconstructionary
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• reconstructions
  plural

Etymology

Origin of reconstruction

First recorded in 1785–95; re- + construction

Explanation

When you put something back together or rebuild it, you do a reconstruction, like the reconstruction of a neighborhood after a flood or earthquake. Combine the prefix re-, or "again" with construction and you get a word that means "the process of putting something back together." Crime or accident reconstruction help experts figure out what really happened and possibly who is guilty or at fault, but reconstruction can also be the rebuilding of place that has been damaged, or the time of the rebuilding, like the Reconstruction era following the American Civil War.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

reconstruction Reconstruction reconstructions

"Dynamic reconstruction enables low-loading catalysts to achieve high performance, offering new opportunities for the rational design of efficient catalysts while reducing reliance on high metal loadings."

From Science Daily ● Sep. 9, 2026

Nepal, a largely rural nation of 30 million people that has contributed little to the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming, has said reconstruction could cost billions of dollars.

From Barron's ● Sep. 8, 2026

Schwartz agreed that Ukraine’s eventual reconstruction would be “a long tailwind for Poland, for sure.”

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 3, 2026

Recalling the model airplane sets he assembled as a child, he arranged a fish, a chicken and a duck as a collection of dissected parts on a tabletop, labeling it with instructions for reconstruction.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026

Darwin’s gift was natural history—the reconstruction of history by observing nature.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

"Reconstruction might take the priority over reform," he said, pointing to devastated hydropower projects, destroyed communities and the urgent need to restore livelihoods.

From Barron's ● Sep. 2, 2026

But in an “ideas forum” at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora in July he sketched out some basics for what he calls “Cuba Day Zero: Stabilization, Reconstruction and the Path to Investment.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 23, 2026

"Reconstruction can become a driver of economic activity, but only if there are sufficient resources, institutions capable of carrying it out, and rules that generate confidence for investment," said Oliveros.

From Barron's ● Jul. 11, 2026

Her concurrence also refuses to sanitize Reconstruction into an abstract legal debate.

From Slate ● Jul. 2, 2026

Just as Southern legislatures had passed the black codes in response to the early steps of Reconstruction, in the years immediately following Brown v.

From "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander

Early attempts to present real events on celluloid sometimes combined on-the-scene footage with staged reconstructions.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

"It expands the geographic frame for understanding how tuberculosis circulated in the past and highlights the value of integrating pathogen genomics into broader reconstructions of human history."

From Science Daily ● Mar. 21, 2026

Stadium reconstructions are "becoming more important because of the situation with television media rights", Manuel Gutierrez, vice president of European asset finance at Morningstar DBRS, told AFP.

From Barron's ● Mar. 11, 2026

By combining high speed imaging with three dimensional reconstructions of more than 1,000 cells, the researchers showed how networks of fused neurons coordinate the beating of cilia on different parts of the animal's body.

From Science Daily ● Mar. 6, 2026

The attitude of prehistoric man towards death is, of course, known to us only through deductions and reconstructions, but I am of the opinion that these have given us fairly trustworthy information.

From Reflections on War and Death by Sigmund Freud

Related Words

• rehabilitation
• reorganization
• repair
• restoration