Title: America's reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War
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Content: America's reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War























A New Birth of Freedom: Reconstruction During the Civil War
The Civil War, in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, brought to America "a new birth of freedom." And during the war began the nation's efforts to come to terms with the destruction of slavery and to define the meaning of freedom. By the war's end it was already clear that Reconstruction would bring far-reaching changes in Southern society, and a redefinition of the place of blacks in American life. The Civil War did not begin as a total war, but it soon became one: a struggle that pitted society against society. Never before had mass armies confronted each other on the battlefield with the deadly weapons created by the industrial revolution. The resulting casualties dwarfed anything in the American experience. Some 650,000 men died in the war, including 260,000 Confederates -- over one-fifth of the South's adult white male population.