how you think life in the South was different after the war.
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The time: Spring 1865, at the end of the Civil War
The place: The American South
The problems: Destruction, hunger, lawlessness and violence
More than a million African Americans were refugees, homeless, separated from family during years of slavery, wondering what to do now. The white male population had been decimated by the war. The survivors straggled home, many of them wounded. But when they arrived home, they found a strange new world waiting for them.
Governments in many places ceased to exist. Southern infrastructure was almost totally destroyed. Cities were in shambles. Chimneys loomed in overgrown fields where homes once stood. Farm fields were destroyed. The familiar social order was gone. Former slaves were now free with the same rights as everyone else. Even the so-called 'favorite' house slaves - the ones their masters had thought loved them - were long gone. The federal government was imposing their concept of Reconstruction, troops still marched through the cities to enforce new laws, and Northern civilians streamed in, for better or worse.
You might say these former Confederates got what they deserved; after all, slavery is wrong. But at least for the short term, the morality of slavery was irrelevant. The immediate problem was that it was late spring, and the crops needed to get in the ground before it was too late. The people who knew how to work the fields were demanding wages, yet land owners had no money to pay them until the harvest came in. What could possibly be done?
The place: The American South
The problems: Destruction, hunger, lawlessness and violence
More than a million African Americans were refugees, homeless, separated from family during years of slavery, wondering what to do now. The white male population had been decimated by the war. The survivors straggled home, many of them wounded. But when they arrived home, they found a strange new world waiting for them.
Governments in many places ceased to exist. Southern infrastructure was almost totally destroyed. Cities were in shambles. Chimneys loomed in overgrown fields where homes once stood. Farm fields were destroyed. The familiar social order was gone. Former slaves were now free with the same rights as everyone else. Even the so-called 'favorite' house slaves - the ones their masters had thought loved them - were long gone. The federal government was imposing their concept of Reconstruction, troops still marched through the cities to enforce new laws, and Northern civilians streamed in, for better or worse.
You might say these former Confederates got what they deserved; after all, slavery is wrong. But at least for the short term, the morality of slavery was irrelevant. The immediate problem was that it was late spring, and the crops needed to get in the ground before it was too late. The people who knew how to work the fields were demanding wages, yet land owners had no money to pay them until the harvest came in. What could possibly be done?
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