Legal and Political Manipulations After the Civil War The formal
gutting of the sweeping social and electoral reforms that
followed the Civil War were among the most shameful events in
American legal history. Here is a brief overview of some of the
most prominent turnarounds. A few months after assuming office,
President Andrew Johnson (Abraham Lincoln's successor)
overturned the federal government's program of distributing
abandoned lands to freedmen. An attempt to divide confiscated
land into 40-acre lots and distribute it among freed slaves and
Union-sympathizing refugees received a good deal of attention,
but it failed to win support in Congress. The result: The lands
of former slave owners went to an emerging white ruling class,
and not to the freedmen who had worked them under pain of
torture, separation from family members, and murder. Watering
Down the Fourteenth Amendment The Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution—obviously a measure intended to secure legal rights
for African-Americans—was ratifie