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Reconstruction

A Congressional directive to rebuild state and society of the Southern United States in the years towards the end of and following the Civil War, from 1863 to 1877.

As early as 1863, President Abraham Lincoln initiated policies to rebuild the South from its Civil War devastation as quickly as possible.[1]

In 1866, President Andrew Johnson continued Lincoln's policies, but the Radical Republicans achieved control and instigated stronger control. They removed former Confederates from power and enfranchised freed slaves. It gave the U. S. Army military authority over the entire South and created the Freedmen's Bureau which installed a free labor economy as well as schools and churches for former slaves.[1]

Northerns by the thousands swept into the South as entrepreneurs, politicians, businessmen and missionaries. Many in the South considered them to be hostile interlopers and termed them "carpetbaggers." In 1873, efforts to rebuild the South's broken railroad system collapsed during the nationwide depression known as the Panic of 1873.[1]

Trail West to Fury: In 1867,[2] Bret and Bart Maverick returned to their home town of Little Bend, Texas after the Civil War to find it being run by the Union Army instead of the rightful Johnny Rebs who had "come home to nothing" after the war. Local rancher Jessie Hayden was determined to build his own empire through any means, either lawful or unlawful, ostensibly to keep the carpetbaggers from stealing Texas away from Texans.[3]