NARRATOR
April 11th, 1865. Two days after the end of the Civil War. In the White House, President Abraham Lincoln agonized over his first speech since the defeat of the South. The jubilant crowd outside expected a celebration of the Union victory. Instead, Lincoln delivered a sobering message. The task that lay ahead, he warned, would be "fraught with great difficulty." He called it Reconstruction. Six hundred thousand had died. Bitter enemies, North and South, had to be reconciled. And four million former slaves had to be brought into the life of a nation that had excluded them for centuries.

BLIGHT
Nobody had scripted this moment. It was a greater challenge than the challenge of winning the war.

NARRATOR
In the turmoil that followed, Americans North and South would write their own scripts for the future. In a wild corner of Louisiana, a Northerner and his family rose to political power, with violent consequences.

MARSTON
Once they were arrested, they were going to die. Because we're at war now.

NARRATOR
In Georgia, a fearless former minister staked out an independent colony for blacks, and found himself locked in a struggle with a determined young woman who came back to reclaim her family's plantation.

WALKER
As black people showed that they were capable of controlling and guiding their own lives, this only created greater anxiety and white hostility.

NARRATOR
In Congress, a former slave challenged whites' deepest beliefs about race and class.

FONER
It's one of those very rare historical moments when everything is up for grabs. An old order, and old society has been pretty much destroyed.

NARRATOR
Some saw Reconstruction as a chance to build a new nation out of the ashes of war and slavery. Others vowed to resist. They would wage a new war to protect their way of life and a racial order they believed ordained by God.