 During the Reconstruction period of 1865–1877, federal laws provided civil rights protections in the U.S. South for freedmen, African Americans who had formerly been slaves, and the minority of blacks who had been free before the war.In the 1870s, Democrats gradually regained power in the Southern legislatures, after having used insurgent paramilitary groups, such as the White League and the Red Shirts, to disrupt Republican organizing, run Republican officeholders out of town, and intimidate blacks to suppress their voting.Extensive voter fraud was also used.