In many ways the Reconstruction helped the nation as a whole, but on the other hand it didn't give many opportunities for the blacks from gaining their equality. Reconstruction was the method of rebuilding the nation that followed the American Civil War. It began under President Lincoln before the close of the war, and was carried on by President Johnson after the assassination of President Lincoln, during the years 1865 and 1866. Afterward there was a second phase of reconstruction, known as the congressional plan, which undid all that had been done by Presidents Lincoln and Johnson. This following period was the greatest trial that the South had to bear, not excepting the terrible ordeal of war. Even though the blacks gained some equality after the Civil War, the rights were mostly taken back as the Southern states were readmitted back into the Union by creating the Ku Klux Klan, black codes, and sharecropping.
             The newly freed southern slaves gradually learned that the freedom they received was not as they had anticipated. As the white southerners became more anxious to regain their power they began to use different laws in order to achieve what they wanted. In 1865, the southerners created Black Codes, which served as a way to control and inhibit the freedom of ex-slaves. Codes controlled almost all aspects of life and prohibited African Americans from the freedoms that had been won. Not only did the whites wanted to control their ex-slaves, they needed some cheap laborers. While things could no longer be exactly the same as in slavery, they found a way to guarantee that blacks would serve as their laborers. To do this, they created Black Codes. Codes regulated civil and legal rights, from marriage to the right to hold and sell property to the predestined definition of African Americans as agricultural laborers. To help the southerners keep many laborers they arrested and charged African Americans who were not employed....