USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -As a result of the Union victory in the Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1865), nearly four million slaves were freed. The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) granted African Americans citizenship, and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) guaranteed their right to vote.

Detailed explanation-2: -Four million newly freed African Americans faced the future of previously-unknown freedom from the old plantation system, with few rights or protections, and surrounded by a war-weary and intensely resistant white population.

Detailed explanation-3: -Some black Southerners aided the Confederacy. Most of these were forced to accompany their masters or were forced to toil behind the lines. Black men were not legally allowed to serve as combat soldiers in the Confederate Army–they were cooks, teamsters, and manual laborers.

Detailed explanation-4: -Blacks who shouldered arms for the Confederacy numbered more than 3, 000 but fewer than 10, 000, he said, among the hundreds of thousands of whites who served. Black laborers for the cause numbered from 20, 000 to 50, 000.