Reconstruction was a bit of both, because while it brought all the states in the south back into the fold as one nation, it led to segregation and laws that held a large proportion of the population in those areas as second-class citizens for the better part of a century. With the imposition of Jim Crow-era laws, poll taxes, and literacy tests, black citizens were seen as not much better than slaves for 80 years or more until the mid-1960s.
