Reconstruction era removed civilian governments in the South, and placed the former Confederacy under the rule of the U.S. Army. The army conducted new elections in which the freed slaves could vote, while whites who had held leading positions under the Confederacy were temporarily denied the vote and were not permitted to run for office. In ten states, coalitions of freedmen, recent black and white arrivals from the North (carpetbaggers), and white Southerners who supported Reconstruction (scalawags) cooperated to form Republican biracial state governments. They introduced various reconstruction programs including: funding public schools, establishing charitable institutions, raising taxes, and funding public improvements
A Word to the People but were heckled and had difficulty in making themselves heard. Ten years after the publication, on 14 August 2001, "Sovetskaya Rossiya" published an appeal entitled "Stop reforms of death!" («Остановить „реформы смерти“!»), in which the letter "A Word to the People" was called "prophesying". A Word to the People "A Word to the People" (Russian: «Слово к народу») was an open letter signed by twelve Soviet public figures. The declaration was published in "Sovetskaya Rossiya" (a newspaper that expressed anti-perestroika views) on 23 July 1991. The signers included writers Yuri Bondarev, Valentin Rasputin and Alexander Prokhanov, singer Lyudmila Zykina, war