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History Forum
On April 9, 1865, General Lee of the Confederate Army surrendered to General Grant of the Union Army. The outcomes of the War would be long reaching. In a THREE paragraph post, discuss the economic, political and social outcomes of the Civil War on both the North and the South.
Provide at least one reference, cited and referenced in the format outlined in Citations Booster (see Module 1), to support your response.
Submission: Your response to the questions above should consist of at least THREE fully developed paragraphs (meaning 5-6 sentences each). Post is due by midnight (EST) on Thursday.
After you have posted your initial post, read and respond to TWO or more of your classmates’ posts by midnight (EST) on Sunday. It should consist of at least ONE fully developed paragraph (5-6 sentences). Be sure to make substantive and constructive comments (just posting “nice post” doesn’t count). For example, add something from your own experience, something you’ve read or seen. If the situation calls for it, feel free to state an opinion, but be sure to state any points with which you agree and/or those with which you disagree, as well as your reasons for agreeing or disagreeing.
Classmate #1 Sydney Sokol
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The South’s economy a good deal more than the north’s as a result of the civil war. For one, the south lost $2.5 billion worth of human property. Railroads, factories, and towns were damaged or destroyed. More than that, the southern plantations no longer had slaves to work the fields. They had to pay their farmhands. The major plantation owners could no longer live the same luxurious life. However, according to History.com, “many southern states in 1865 and 1866 successfully enacted a series of laws known as the “black codes,” which were designed to restrict freed blacks’ activity and ensure their availability as a labor force.” In doing this, plantation owners still had the labor force they needed. The North, on the other hand , didn’t have those kinds of problems. As most of the fighting was done in the south, there wasn’t to much destruction in the north. That was done by mobs. They did have to free their slaves, but that wasn’t such a big deal for them. Most factory work was done by free white people, anyway.
The war also caused a good deal of political strife. Before the war started, the north and south had their own presidential nominees for each party. This by itself goes to show just how bad relations had become. This was especially shown when congress enacted legislation that allowed black people to vote. The northern states didn’t have a problem with this and for the most part didn’t challenge it. The south, however, were different. Most white people in the south, as well as some in the north, saw themselves as superior to black people. So, for this reason, they didn’t want black people voting. White politicians in the south made various tests and tax polls to make sure that black people couldn’t vote. This lasted well into the 1960’s.
The most horrible consequences of the war was probably the social issues. With the both the north’s and south’s mindset of white superiority, the black people of the north and south had several problems. Many workplaces did not hire black people. In fact, most black people kept doing what they did when they were slaves. They worked on plantations and shipyards, this time for pay. They were paid less than the average for a white man, however. On top of that, the black community was being harassed by the Ku Klux Klan. It was a common occurrence when a black home was raided be KKK members. According to History.com, “reactionary forces– including the Ku Klux Klan– would reverse the changes wrought by Radical Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the South.”
Classmate #2 Nicole Williams
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The economic outcome of the Civil War for the South alone was devastating, I’m not even talking about the repercussion of slavery being abolished. The south was basically destroyed during the Civil War losing a lot of their “livestock, farm machinery and male population of age” (Digital History 3095). Several large cities in the south like “Atlanta, Columbia, Richmond, and Charleston were burnt to the ground” (Digital History 3095). In just five years South Carolina’s “property value” dropped by more than half, going from the worth of “four-hundred million to fifty million” in only five years. The economic outcome for the North was completely opposite that of the South. The “South suffered the most damage to their land since that’s where the war was mostly fought” (U-S-History). The Northern colonies “factories, railroads and farms boomed” during and after the war increasing their wealth (NPS GOV).
The civil war was over and black slaves were free was the political outcome of the civil war. At least that’s the way it was supposed to be, but white confederates had other ideas. The “black codes” were laws that “southern lawmakers put in effect” (Digital History 3101). These codes were put into play to “make ex-slaves to work chain-gangs on the plantations they once worked” (Digital History 3101). Reconstruction ended “Black Codes, but many came back into effect with the “Jim Crow laws”, it was not till the “Civil Rights Act of 1964” that these laws went away for good (Britannica).
The social outcome of the Civil War led certain groups like white woman and blacks to fight for more rights. Many African Americans started to “become knowledgeable about the privileges” whites had and that they should have, they protested for their “rights to vote and have their own land” (Bartleby). If you truly think about it African Americans that paved the way for other groups to fight for their equal rights.
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