Economic and employment situation in South America at 1865

Question

Describe the situation of the South after 1865. What was the economic and employment situation like? In some states, half the population consisted of ex-slaves. What do you think their lives were like? What did the term Reconstruction mean at the time?

Answer 1

When the guns fell silent in 1865, some southern cities were flattened. They had become eerie wastelands of charred timber, rubble, and free-standing chimneys. Railroads were operating for few dozens of miles. Bridges were gone wherever armies had passed. Commercial ties with Europe had been snapped. Cultivation of the soil had been disrupted. By the thousands, the small farms of the men who served in the ranks were overgrown in the ranks were overgrown in weeds and brambles. Plantations were abandoned.

Reconstruction referred to the political process by which the eleven rebel states were restored to a normal constitutional relationship with the federal government. It was the Union, that great abstraction over which so many had died, that was rebuilt.