The Reconstruction of the South

The Reconstruction of the South

The Reconstruction of the South
Over six hundred thousand men died during the Civil War, from injuries received
on the battlefield or by diseases that were then untreatable.   All told,   over a million men
were killed or seriously wounded. Most of the men lost were young and had left families
behind. The cost of the war totaled about fifteen billion dollars: other costs such as lost
lives, memories and wasted energy can never be calculated. The war was a supreme test to
the American nation, but as the Americans would soon discover, a larger test was still to
come with the reconstruction of the South.
The post-war South was in a very poor state.   Glorious cities were now reduced to
rubble.   Transportation systems no longer existed; roads, so long without maintenance,
were beyond repair, and rails had been dismantled so that they could be melted into
bullets.   Without slaves or livestock (the slaves had been freed by the thirteenth
amendment and most livestock had been taken by plundering northerners), the fields sat
overtaken by weeds (Bailey, 488).   How could the south rebuild after this social and
economic systems had been destroyed?   Should the Confederate leaders be punished and
how?   What was to be done with the millions of newly freed blacks?   How should the
readmission process be handled?   These and other pressing questions were being brought
to the forefront demanding solutions (Kolchin, 1).
Andrew Johnson may be one of America’s most unlucky presidents because he
came into office at such a critical time in history.   He succeeded Abraham Lincoln in April
1865, only days after the Civil War had ended.   He had been put on Lincoln’s ticket in
1864 simply to attract the votes of War Democrats; no one had considered that Johnson
might one day run the country.   Johnson was a devoted supporter of the constitution and
states’ rights.   He was disliked by nearly everyone- the South distrusted him, the North
saw him as an outsider, the...