The Civil War

IV - Results of the War

This webpage deals with two issues:

1. Reconstruction

2. Economic & Social Results in the South

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Teachit Card Games (dominoes and pelmanism) with accompanying exercises (pdf)

  Lincoln v Davis - who was the better President?

YouTube

Reconstruction: America After the Civil War - PBS trailer (recommended)

Reconstruction and 1876 - Crash Course US History (really good, but watch it AFTER your have studied this page)

POLITICAL AFTERMATH – ‘RECONSTRUCTION’, 1865-77

1. The Union was saved. 
2. A Stronger Federal Government.  The 13th Amendment included the phrase: “Congress shall have power to enforce this article”. 
3. A Weaker President: after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson tried to implement a moderate settlement, and he gave all southerners who had not fought for the Confederacy a pardon and returned much of the land to its former owners.  He opposed the 14th Amendment and military governors.  Congress overruled him and passed two laws limiting the powers of the President.  It tried (but failed) to impeach him. 
4. The 13th Amendment (1865) ended slavery throughout the United States. 
   The 14th Amendment (Civil Rights Act) guaranteed citizenship and “equal protection of the laws” to all people born or naturalized in the United States, including formerly enslaved individuals, and provided equal protection under the law. 
   The 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote.  Southern states were required to write new constitutions, accept the abolition of slavery, and grant civil rights to African Americans before they could be readmitted to the Union. 
   When the Ku Klux Klan began to attack Black people, the government passed Enforcement Acts to protect them. 
5. Military Rule in the South: Congress overruled President Johnson and passed the Reconstruction Act (1867), sending military governors with Union troops to rule in the southern states.  This ended when a state had rewritten its constitution and had been readmitted to the Union; all the states had been readmitted by 1870. 
6. Successes of Reconstruction:
   • Advocates of 'radical Reconstruction' such as Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens made a genuine attempt to give the emancipated former slaves equality, opportunity and civil rights.
   • 80% of Black males registered to vote; in 1870 Hiram Revels became the first Black Senator (for Mississippi) and Joseph Rainey became the first of seven Black Congressmen.  Two thousand Black Americans, most of them formerly enslaved, served at every level of government throughout the South. 
   • Families, divided by sale or war, were re-united and thousands of Black Americans married. 
   • More than 1,000 Black Schools and hundreds of Black Churches were built. 
   • The government's Freedmen's Bureau provided food, clothing and shelter to destitute Black people; provided medical facilities, schools and teachers; and even acted as a Court for Black people where they would not get a fair trial in the normal courts.
   • Reconstruction administrations in the southern states established the South's first state-funded public school systems, strengthened the bargaining power of plantation labourers, and outlawed racial discrimination in public transportation and accommodation.
7. The Compromise of 1877: many Southerners resisted Reconstruction fiercely. 
   • Northerners moving south in search of work were hated as ‘Carpetbaggers’ (because they carried their possessions in a cheap bag made from carpet), as were ‘Scallawags’ (southerners who supported the Union). 
   • There were complaints (some justified) about corruption and speculation.
   • There was a war of terror – beatings, lynchings, assassinations – against Black people and white Republican officials by groups such as the KKK, the White League, and the Red Shirts.  In 1872 the government stopped funding the Freedmen's Bureau (see here) after criticism and a wave of violence towards Bureau schools and teachers. 
   • In 1877 the Democrats took advantage of a disputed Presidential election to make the Compromise of 1877, which secured the withdrawal of federal troops and gave 'Redeemer Democrats' political licence in the South. 
   • Reconstruction came to an end, with Southern States passing political measures such as poll taxes, literacy tests to deprive Black Americans of the vote, and Jim Crow laws to maintain white political supremacy (eg Black Americans were not allowed to marry a white person, serve on a jury, or testify in court against a white person). 

ECONOMIC & SOCIAL RESULTS IN THE SOUTH [ESMIE]

The social and cultural consequences of the American Civil War in the Southern States extended through Reconstruction (1865–1877) and into the 20th century:

1.  ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES

The Southern economy was ruined by the war:

Impact by 1890:

• The Cotton Industry was damaged: Egypt and India had filled the gap in cotton production during the war and, trying to rebuild the industry without enslaved tabour, the industry struggled to regain its pre-war profitability. 
• The Southern elite slavocracy was ruined:
  • Much of their wealth had been in the form enslaved people; with the abolition of slavery, they lost $3 billion. 
  • In addition, land was confiscated.  In 1865, General Sherman issued Special Field Order Number 15, which set aside more than 400,000 acres of coastal plantations for settlement by formerly-enslaved people.  Also (citing the U.S.  Revenue Act of 1862) the US seized lands from Southern landowners who did not pay taxes to the Union. 
  • To finance the war, many Southerners had bought Confederate bonds, which were now worthless after the defeat. 
  • White incomes fell by 40% after the war. 
• The end of slavery meant the Southern plantation system could no longer function as it had before.  Instead landowners replaced it with tenant farming (letting their land for rent) or – for formerly-enslaved people and poor whites – sharecropping (letting a farm for a share of the crop).  Sharecropping re-asserted the dominance of the landowners, and trapped both poor blacks and whites who became increasingly impoverished and debt-obliged; debt tied the tenants to the landowner almost as completely as slavery had done, and meant that some formerly-enslaved people were actually worse off. 

Longer-term Effects:

• During Reconstruction, taxes were imposed to rebuild infrastructure, but the South remained economically underdeveloped compared to the North for a century.  This was exacerbated because Northern financiers and industrialists bought up Southern land, railroads, and businesses, further increasing the South’s economic dependence on the North. 
• Poverty and lack of social mobility persisted throughout the 20th century, as the economic gap between the elite and the poor interacted with racism to embed and deepen the social rift. 

2.  SEGREGATION and TERROR

The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments abolished slavery and gave Black Americans citizenship and voting rights, but they did not lead to racial equality.  Especially after the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction, these rights were undermined.  By 1890, the Southern states had enacted Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation, and embedded white supremacy into the social structures of the South. 

Impact by 1890:

• A “rigid racial caste system” developed, in which African Americans were treated as socially inferior, and faced discrimination, bullying, violence (including lynching), and poverty (eg as sharecroppers). 
• Segregation was legally upheld by the Plessy v.  Ferguson case in 1896. 

Longer-term Effects:

• The culture of racial segregation institutionalized inequalities in schools, public facilities, and voting until the 1960s. 
• White supremacy organizations like the Ku Klux Klan terrorized communities until the 1980s, with members throughout the police and the justice system to protect them. 
• The Southern white elite became increasingly paranoid and entrenched. 

3.  MOTHERHOOD and APPLE PIE

After the war, a conservative ideal of womanhood known as the ‘Southern Belle’ reemerged, emphasizing genteel motherhood, family honour, and subservience to her husband. 

Impact by 1890:

• Women’s public roles were curtailed, with an emphasis on traditional gender roles. 

Longer-term Effects:

• Race, class and this repressive cultural ideal intersected to limit Southern women’s opportunities. 
• Culturally, the image of the virtuous white Southern woman led to the 'protection-of-white-women' as a justification for KKK violence (particularly lynching); eg in 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, was murdered when – on a visit to Mississippi – he whistled at a white woman shopkeeper. 

4.  IDENTITY

Defeat in the Civil War led to the ‘Lost Cause’ cultural movement, which sought to romanticize the war as a defence of states' rights, rather than slavery.  Southerners saw themselves as the true Americans-trying-to-preserve-the-Republic, and northerners as the aggressors who caused the war. 

Impact by 1890:

• The Lost Cause narrative spread through monuments, books, and public memory, glorifying Confederate leaders like Robert E.  Lee and creating hatred and a sense of victimhood among white Southerners. 
• Organizations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy shaped public education to ensure that the Civil War was remembered as an act of Southern heroism. 

Longer-term Effects:

• The Lost Cause myth was used to support opposition to civil rights movements in the 1950s and ‘60s, and is still believed today. 

5.  EDUCATION

The period following Reconstruction saw literacy tests introduced as a way to prevent Black Americans voting.  Since literacy tests involved literacy, education for Black Americans was kept underfunded, overcrowded and second rate. 

Impact by 1890:

• In 1865, Congress had set up the Freedmen's Bureau, to help freed former enslaved people and poor whites set up after the war; one of the most important work its did was in education, and by 1869 it had set up 2,677 Freedmen's Schools with 150,000 students ...  but this work came to an end after criticism and a wave of violence towards Bureau schools and teachers caused the federal government to end funding in 1872. 
• In 1880, three-quarters of Black Americans were illiterate, and still 61% in 1890. 

Longer-term Effects:

• Political power consolidated on a white elite, which enforced policies that maintained social and racial inequalities. 
• Southern states developed a culture where civil rights were routinely denied to Black Americans.  Black schoolchildren in some Southern schools were not allowed to read the Declaration of Independence, because it might give them ideas about equality and freedom. 
• Schools for Black Americans remained underfunded and substandard into the 1970s.