From: Dustin Hurt
Date: 4/24/00
Time: 7:47:12 PM
Remote Name: 155.247.31.31
With a Yankee victory, the Southern way of life would be changed forever. Antebellum South had established unique norms and morals for society. It had accepted slavery and racism as well as the power of a state government over a federal one. But the they had lost the war and they were in no position to make bargains. Their economy was crushed and their way of life gone. Campaigning armies laid waste to country sides and battles had destroyed what the men could not. Many Southern cities had been destroyed by sieges and bombardments. Cotton was burned while it waited at ports for export and crops were destroyed before they could be picked. The even Southern industry, that had been so rare, had been plundered and dismantled. Rails and bridges had been destroyed in broad advances and hasty withdrawals. But most importantly, the South had lost its huge (slave) labor force. When the Reconstruction began the South was put under military rule, further removing the rights of the citizens. The blacks gained the right to vote, as well as citizenship, after their freedom was granted. The whites tried to limit the rights of the black through racist legislation. Hate groups, like the Ku Klux Klan, were formed and violence was used against the blacks. Eventual, the federal government gave rights back to the states in the South and to some it seemed like everything was the way it was before. But was it? The South still did not have slaves. In fact, they had to finally come to terms with racism. Before Southerners could argue that slavery was a way of life, an economic necessity, or the limit of a black, but now it was about prejudice and nothing else. Southern states never again felt the power they once had; the power of the federal government was proven. Agriculture, and cotton, never return to the South with the same vigor it once had. The South did not improve its situation nor did they make things the same as before. Not only had they lost the war, but they had lost reconstruction, too.