With the end of the Civil War, a war that literally destroyed the South and that brought about the demise of a society dependent on slavery, an important question was answered. The question was whether the union could be divided. And the resounding answer was no. But the answer to one question raised a new question: could a reunion of the society of the South and the society of the North be accomplished? The answer to that question was sought throughout the era of Reconstruction, which began after the end of the Civil war in 1865, and continued to be sought into the twentieth century. The Emancipation Proclamation had formally ended slavery in the Confederacy, and the Thirteenth Amendment, proposed by Lincoln in 1864 and ratified in December
