Americans called the years after the Civil War “Reconstruction.”  By that they meant two things:  restoring the nation to unity after enormous bloodshed and bitterness and rebuilding the South in the wake of more than two centuries of slavery.  Those two goals often clashed.  Virginia, the largest slave state and the state most devasted by war, experienced Reconstruction in every dimension.  The people of Richmond, the capital of the state and of the Confederacy, confronted the conflict and confusion, as seen here  through the eyes of the prominent Richmond Daily Dispatch.