When the Civil War ended, there was just a giant smoking crater where American society used to be. And that might be an understatement. 

3% of our total population died. Diseases like malaria, dysentery, and cholera spread like crazy. The economy tanked. Large sections of the South were under military occupation. 

Oh, and four million people were suddenly freed.

And that's why they call the period after the Civil War "Reconstruction"—we had a lot to reconstruct. We rebuilt ourselves, and the decisions we made changed the course of our national history. For like, ever. Some of those decisions were among the best, bravest, most what-took-you-so-long decisions we've ever made, like the radical notion that every person was entitled to freedom regardless of race. 

And some of those decisions—like Jim Crow and segregation—were among our worst.

Good, bad, and ugly, we can all agree that Reconstruction was a truly revolutionary time. It was our first grand experiment in expanded federal authority and intervention, a precursor to the Civil Rights Movement, and our first impeachment of a president. (High five, Andrew Johnson). It was the beginning of the Ku Klux Klan, but also the first time an African American was elected to office. 

It was the best of times, but honestly, it was mostly the worst of times.

In the 12 years that followed the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, the United States pursued some of its noblest values and committed some of its darkest betrayals. Black freedmen discovered that freedom didn't mean citizenship, and angry Southern whites pushed back against federal power. 

Yeah, there'll be some morality-judging going on in this guide, but hopefully, there will be more figuring-out-whys.

Brace yourselves: history is coming.

If you care about the Civil Rights Movement, you should care about Reconstruction. If you're concerned with racial equality in America, you need to study Reconstruction. If you've ever been curious about the history behind the current debate over the role of the federal government in people's lives, then this is the chapter of history for you.

Reconstruction was a truly revolutionary time. It was the sort of experiment in expanded federal authority and intervention that could've only come after a cataclysmic war. At least, that was true in the 19th century.

Just imagine it: four million people, suddenly freed from the chains of bondage, walking around amidst the ruins of the South and still interacting with the people who used to own them, who used to whip them or sell their relatives down the river if they chose.

Under slavery, racial boundaries had been clearly established. Now the question on everyone's mind was: "How free is free?" 

That turned out to be an extremely difficult and complex question. One historian—Leon F. Litwack—won a Pulitzer Prize for the 600 pages he took to try and explain it, and even then, he said his answer only began to suggest the challenges inherent in the idea. 

We'll give that question and a few others our very best shot here, though in considerably fewer than 600 pages. What happened when freedom suddenly came to four million people, and what did that mean?

This is a story about federal, state, and local governments; about presidents and sheriffs; about Northerners and Southerners, terrorists and liberated slaves, and Blacks, whites, and mulattoes. This is a story about the everyday people on the ground whose names are mostly lost to history, and about the prominent legislators and journalists who were and are more well-known. It encompasses politics, society, gender, economics, and constitutional law. It involves the confrontation between Black hopes and white values that structured the Reconstruction period. 

It details the process by which this country sought to put itself back together again. It's not simple, but the most important stories seldom are. What they are, is worth reading.