Title: the American Civil War -- Reconstruction
Headings: The American Civil War: Reconstruction
The American Civil War: Reconstruction
Soft Peace
President Lincoln
Social Revolution
The Freeman's Bureau
Restoration of Civil Government
Black Aspirations
Black Codes (1865)
Ku Klux Klan
1866 Congressional By-election
Radical Republicans
Reconstruction Act (1867)
President Johnson
Amending the Constitution
President Grant (1869-77)
Relief
Reviving the Economy
Reconstruction State Governments
The Courts
Reversal of Heros and Villans
Black-White Relations
Sharecropping
Land Ownership
Lost Cause Critics
Achievemnents
Lost Cause Depiction
Presidential Election (1876)
President Hayes (1877-81)
Withdrawl of Federal Troops
White Supremecy
Individuals
Impact
Sources
CIH

Content: Social Revolution
The whole social structure of the South and an economy based on forced labor was upended by the Civil War. Slaves began running away from the plantations as the Federal armies pushed south. The famed Undergound Railway had reslly only made running away possible in the Bordrr States. Now for the first time freedom was possible for the slavs in the Deep South. And eventually the runaway slaves and the free northern blacks joined the struggle against slavery. They faced brutal reprisals. President Lincoln transform the War from a struggle to maintain the Union to a crusade against slavery with the Emanciption Proclmation (October 1862). Eventually the terrible bloodletting takes in toll. Poor southern whites who never owned slaves, but did most of thefighting eventually become disillusioned with fighting to support the platation society. And the plantation owners become desperate as their society collapses around them.