![]() ![]() Thus, even if the South could quickly show some signs of economic recovery, solving the problems posed by social reconstruction would prove to be a much more difficult and lengthy proposition. Old habits of social interaction had to be reconsidered and, most often, unlearned. Its losses in manpower, therefore, was monumental.Īnother consideration in post-bellum America was a new question for southern society: What would be the role of the newly freed black population of the South? What would be the social relationship between this new community and its former white masters? The South faced a newly freed workforce that grew more and more recalcitrant, refusing to work for former masters (very often with good cause), whatever the pay. In addition, the great majority of black soldiers who had fought and died in the Union army were from the South. More than one-fifth of the South’s adult white male population (some 260,000) was lost fighting for the Confederacy. ![]() Beyond these tangible losses there was the devastating cost in human life. Capital that during the war had been invested in manufacturing to a much larger extent than it had been before the war, was now laid to waste with many of the South’s factories in ruins. Economically, the South had been shattered, with much of its capital-formerly invested in slaves-lost. For the people living through the times, this upheaval created a situation that demanded immediate attention. Yet, it is impossible to understand Reconstruction fully without a grasp of the social and economic upheaval the war brought with it. ![]() Beyond the obvious material destruction, there was more to reconstruct in the South than buildings, farms, manufacturing and railroads-there were social and political relationships to rebuild. ![]()
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