From Slaves to Citizens: African-Americans, Rights Consciousness, and Reconstruction

Addressing a racially mixed jury selected to try Ku Klux Klansmen in federal circuit court in Columbia, South Carolina in 1871, United States Attorney Daniel T. Corbin highlighted the dramatic changes that the previous decade had witnessed. "Gentlemen," he remarked, "we have lived over a century in the last ten years." Corbin did not exaggerate. The Civil War and Reconstruction years witnessed changes as revolutionary as any the nation has ever experienced. And nowhere were the changes as sweeping as in the realm of constitutional law.