Reconstruction?!?

All people of the U.S.? To be accurate, only white men retained the right to vote and to hold office. Women, regardless of race, were not entitled to vote and hold office until the 1920s.

Between 1775-1877, slavery was not explicitly banned by the U.S. government. However, northern states generally abolished slavery after the Revolutionary War and by the 1840s, all the northern states were completely slavery-free and adopted the industrialization to mechanize more things in their region better and far better than the out-dated slavery. In 1807, the U.S. government criminalized international trade of imports of slaves with the passage of the "Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves". The Southern States, however, kept slavery as their economy heavily depends on it due to the profit of cotton industry and that manual was cheaper This trend is what set off the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865 where hundreds of thousands of people died. The South lost the war and its right to keep slavery and therefore subject to federal control. All the slaves were freed by the Union's victory as a result.

During the Reconstruction Era, dozens of legislation were set in place designed to enfranchise the rights of the newly-freed slaves. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 gave African-Americans the same civil rights and enjoyed by white men but not the right to vote. The 14th and 15th amendments gave African-Americans the power to bring cases to federal courts in case of civil right violations. The Civil Rights of 1875 (only later to be struck down in 1883 by the SCOTUS) prohibited discrimination in public accommodations based on race.