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Ch 22

1865-1877 The Ordeal of Reconstruction
▪The Problems of Peace
◦The question of what should be done with the Confederate ringleaders arose…Davis and his fellow “conspirators” were finally released, partly b/c no VA jury would convict them…all leaders were then pardoned by President Johnson in 1868…
◦Dismal was the South as a civilization had collapsed in both economic and social structure…cities such as Charleston and Richmond were rubble-strewn and weed-choked…
◦Economic life stopped as banks and businesses shut down b/c of runaway inflation…factories were dismantled…transportation broke down completely…agriculture was almost hopelessly crippled…slave labor system collapsed, seed was scarce, and livestock was driven off…
◦Planter aristocrats were temporarily humbled…faced charred and gutted mansions, lost investments, and almost worthless land…investment of $2 billion in slaves evaporated w/ emancipation…
◦Many high spirited white southerners remained dangerously defiant…former Confederates continued to think that their view of secession was correct and that the “lost cause” was still a just war…
▪Freedmen Define Freedom
◦Confusion abounded in the South about the meaning of “freedom” for blacks…emancipation was taken differently in different parts of the Confederacy…many blacks found themselves emancipated and then re-enslaved…slave-owners protested that slavery was lawful until state legislatures or the Supreme Court declared otherwise…
◦The variety of responses to emancipation showed the complexity of the master-slave relationship…some slaves as told by their master resisted Union armies, others fought for emancipation, and others fought for the Union troops…
◦Under force, all masters eventually had to recognize their slave’s permanent freedom…many slaves took new names and abandoned cotton and sought silks, satins, and others…
◦Emancipation strengthened the black family, and many newly freed men and women formalized “slave marriages”…others left to...