Lesson One

From a military standpoint the Civil War had a four-year history. It would take another dozen years, and more, to determine what the results of the war would be. The questions clearly settled by 1865 were significant the nation was united and slavery abolished. But other complex questions with far reaching implications, remained unanswered. What would be the place of the freedmen in America society? How would the rebellious states be brought back into the Union? How would the North and South be united socially and politically? The victorious North was in a position to answer those questions and to dominate the South. But Northern politicians were not united in either the answers or to resolve to see them through. President Lincoln’s murder one week after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox only added new sorrow and raised more questions.

As late as 1867 there was no coherent Reconstruction policy. Congress and the new president, Andrew Johnson, struggled with each other with Congress eventually gaining the upper hand. But the Radical Republicans did not control the process for long. As a result the Reconstruction of the South was less than thorough and far from complete. Southern blacks, who had a made some progress in building new lives in the South, were eventually left to fend for themselves. Southern whites, who again took control of their politics, were also as disunited as northern Republicans. Was the New South to be an old one of cotton, rice, sugar and tobacco plantations? Or was the New South to be an industrial South? Ultimately, southern industrialist had little success and the South remained a troubled agricultural region well after 1877. Bur southern whites did agree on something: southern blacks must be kept poor, disenfranchised and wholly under the domination of whites. In pursuit of these goals Jim Crow legislation would put into place a system of racial segregation which evaded the recently enacted Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. Looming over this process was white terror and violence. Mired by weak presidential leadership, political scandal, and an unwillingness to adequately stand against southern whites on behalf of southern blacks, the federal government, and the public at large, eventually turned away from the unfinished task of ensuring equality for the freedmen. As a result, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and for many years beyond that the freedmen had good reason to wonder who had won the Civil War.

1. Discuss sharecropping and the crop-lien system and why was it put in place? What were the consequences?

2. Who were the Radical Republicans and why did they fail to accomplish their goals?

The western frontier has been, and remains, such as powerful influence on American culture and memory it is important to recall that much of this memory was shaped from romantic myths and seldom realized ideals. For some, the West was a land of adventure and there were examples of brave and courageous people who took up a rugged life in hopes of a better future, But the land which was new to thousands of migrants on the overland trails was far from empty and unknown. Major portions of the American West had long been populated by Indians, Spanish, and Mexicans. And the post-Civil War boom of settlement was not just white Americans, but by people from around the world, many having similar aspirations and finding similar challenges. White settlement followed boom and bust patterns in the three industries that came to dominate the region in the second half of the nineteenth century: mining, ranching, and commercial agriculture. Whites, Blacks, Asians, Mexicans, and many others made up the labor force for these three industries. The result was a fluid, radically diverse, and often mobile population beset with terrific prejudice and discrimination. Still there were many accomplishments. Earlier in the nineteenth century, the West had been decidedly underdeveloped region with an almost colonial relationship to more industrial and populated Northeast and Midwest. Except for a few pockets in the Far West, by 1860 the frontier line of agricultural settlement stopped at the eastern edge of the Great Plains. Plains Indians who waged a fierce fight to stay on their lands, an unfamiliar environment, and the absence of sufficient rainfall combined to discourage further advancement westward. However, by the end of the century, the Indian barrier to white settlement had been removed. A transcontinental railroad now linked East with West. Cattlemen had spearheaded development of Texas and the Southwest. Farther west, gold and silver strikes had convinced thousands to come out. In between were an increasing number of white farmers who used the new railroad branches to reach far away markets. The economic rewards were sometimes great but so too were the risks. The competition was intense and the markets had a wide fluctuation in demand and prices. Throughout it all, people came and stayed in such numbers that by the 1890s the era of the frontier seemed to be ending. Americans in particular, longed to keep alive a place of their imagination and assumed values. From this grew the iconic West. In art and stories and even reenactments, the Wild West remained, at least in spirit, as the nation progressed toward the twentieth century.