Editing Reconstruction era (section)

===Military Reconstruction<!-- Section linked from Arkansas -->===
[[File:Reconstruction military districts.svg|thumb|right|upright=1.5|Map of the five Reconstruction military districts
{{Legend|#000|[[First Military District]]}}
{{Legend|#009F6B|[[Second Military District]]}}
{{Legend|#C40233|[[Third Military District]]}}
{{Legend|#FFD300|[[Fourth Military District]]}}
{{Legend|#0087BD|[[Fifth Military District]]}}]]
With the Radicals in control, Congress passed the [[Reconstruction Act]]s on July 19, 1867. The first Reconstruction Act, authored by Oregon Sen. [[George Henry Williams]], a [[Radical Republican]], placed 10 of the former Confederate states—all but Tennessee—under military control, grouping them into five military districts:{{sfnp|Foner|1988|loc= ch. 6}}
* [[First Military District]]: Virginia, under General [[John Schofield]]
* [[Second Military District]]: North Carolina and South Carolina, under General [[Daniel Sickles]]
* [[Third Military District]]: Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, under Generals [[John Pope (general)|John Pope]] and [[George Meade]]
* [[Fourth Military District]]: Arkansas and Mississippi, under General [[Edward Ord]]
* [[Fifth Military District]]: Texas and Louisiana, under Generals [[Philip Sheridan]] and [[Winfield Scott Hancock]]

20,000 U.S. troops were deployed to enforce the act.

The five [[Border states (American Civil War)|border states]] that had not joined the Confederacy were not subject to military Reconstruction. West Virginia, which had [[West Virginia in the American Civil War|seceded]] from Virginia in 1863, and Tennessee, which had already been re-admitted in 1866, were not included in the military districts. Federal troops, however, were kept in West Virginia through 1868 in order to control civil unrest in several areas throughout the state.<ref>{{Citation |title=Journal of the Senate of the State of West Virginia for the Sixth Session, Commencing January 21, 1868 |date=1868 |pages=10 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gzotAQAAMAAJ |place=Wheeling |publisher=John Frew |via=Google Books}}</ref> Federal troops were removed from Kentucky and Missouri in 1866.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Phillips |first=Christopher |title=The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2016 |isbn=9780199720170 |edition=1st |location=New York |pages=296}}</ref>

The 10 Southern state governments were re-constituted under the direct control of the United States Army. One major purpose was to recognize and protect the right of African Americans to vote.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Chin |first1=Gabriel Jackson |date=September 14, 2004 |title=The 'Voting Rights Act of 1867': The Constitutionality of Federal Regulation of Suffrage During Reconstruction |journal=North Carolina Law Review |volume=82 |issue=5 |pages=1581 |ssrn=589301}}</ref> There was little to no combat, but rather a state of [[martial law]] in which the military closely supervised local government, supervised elections, and tried to protect office holders and freedmen from violence.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|loc=ch. 6–7}} Blacks were enrolled as voters; former Confederate leaders were excluded for a limited period.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=274–275}} No one state was entirely representative. Randolph Campbell describes what happened in Texas:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Campbell |first=Randolph B. |title=Gone to Texas: a history of the Lone Star State |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-19-513842-9 |location=New York |page=276}}</ref>{{sfnp|Rhodes|1920|loc=v. 6: p. 199}}
{{blockquote|1=The first critical step&nbsp;... was the registration of voters according to guidelines established by Congress and interpreted by Generals Sheridan and Charles Griffin. The Reconstruction Acts called for registering all adult males, white and black, except those who had ever sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and then engaged in rebellion.... Sheridan interpreted these restrictions stringently, barring from registration not only all pre-1861 officials of state and local governments who had supported the Confederacy but also all city officeholders and even minor functionaries such as sextons of cemeteries. In May Griffin&nbsp;... appointed a three-man board of registrars for each county, making his choices on the advice of known scalawags and local Freedmen's Bureau agents. In every county where practicable a freedman served as one of the three registrars.... Final registration amounted to approximately 59,633 whites and 49,479 blacks. It is impossible to say how many whites were rejected or refused to register (estimates vary from 7,500 to 12,000), but blacks, who constituted only about 30 percent of the state's population, were significantly over-represented at 45 percent of all voters.}}