The Long Term Effects of the American Civil War

1865 - Present

At the bottom of each page is the link for the next page in order all the way to the end of the war.

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Immediate Consequences

1865

When the Civil War ended in 1865 the nation was deeply divided along geographical and racial lines. As the Confederate Army of Virginia, drug its self in to stack weapons at Appomattox Court House, Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain, commanding the soldiers waiting in reception, in surprise move, called his troops to attention and rendered the soldiers salute. The startled Confederates, first thinking they were going to be shot, fell into formation and returned the salute. Afterwards soldiers on both sides joined for hugs, tears, tobacco and food. One part of the nation anyway was willing to get along. Elsewhere, things were not quiet so easy.

Appomattox Station site of Lee's last battle.

At an Episcopal Church service in Richmond shortly after the war the priest finally reached Communion portion of the service only too find an elderly black man at the rail. No one knew quiet what to do until an elderly white man came and kneeled next to him, because the white man was Robert E. Lee everyone else decided it was ok to come forward as well. Some people were willing to rewrite social rules to reflect new social realities, but not everyone was willing to change ideas and attitudes held for a lifetime.

As the armies disbanded and the soldiers returned home problems began to arise as to the status of the freed slaves in the south. Most of the great plantations were in ruins from five years of war. Some of the freed backs stayed on to help rebuild because good, bad, or indifferent the plantation had been their home. A surprisingly large number of freedmen banded together and headed west. Many of these groups moved into the Oklahoma Territory and other places as far out as the Central Valley in California, and established all black farming communities that survived into the 1930’s.

Other young freedmen left the plantations and their families and struck out for the wild west of Hollywood fame. Fully one third of the cowboys that the drove the big herds on the Chisholm Trail, lionized in the early shootum ups, were black. Freedmen showed up in the boomtowns as labors and prospectors and gunslingers, too; they just didn't get into the movies.

In some ways it would seem that the freedmen were integrating into the American society just fine but things weren’t really going all that well. Nathan Bedford Forest started a drinking club for Southern Civil War veterans called the Ku Klux Klan. They dressed in white robes because they considered themselves to be ghosts, the walking dead, mostly though they sat around and drank and told war stories.

Unfortunately for Forrest at the same time he was starting his club another group was also forming called the Night Riders, they wore white sheets to hide their identities and they had no restriction on their membership other than race. The Night Riders were dedicated to re-enslaving the freedmen through the practical application of force and terror. Not surprisingly there were quite a few members of the Night Riders who were also members of the KKK. In a very short period of time the two groups merged and the nonveterans took over the KKK and the names of the two groups were then merged into the Imperial Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Ultimately, Forrest publically renounced this new hybrid organization and walked away from it, but the damage was done.

Reconstruction

1866 - 1877

There was a lot of reconstruction required.

At end of the war the South and parts of the Midwest was in ruins, roads were trashed, rail lines torn up and worn out, houses burned and buildings smashed. In cities like Richmond the sudden collapse and retreat of the Confederate Army had resulted in rioting, looting and the destruction of what little wasn’t already destroyed. Confederate veterans often returned home to find their families starving or gone altogether; for many men, who had been living on the land for years, there was no reason to stay, the farm was ruined and there was no family left to answer too. They had entered the service as young men and they only trade they knew was war.

Many of the returning soldiers became night riders and joined the Klan, others set out for the west, and not surprisingly many turned to banditry. Perhaps they needed the adrenalin, to paraphrase the WWI song, how you going to get them back down on the farm now that they have seen the elephant? With roving bands of white marauders terrorizing the southern countryside, attacking blacks and whites alike, President U.S. Grant decided he had to do something to reestablish law and order in the Deep South. Grant sent soldiers to protect the rights of the freedmen. Blacks were guaranteed the right to vote and an equal standing under law by the 1866 Civil Right Act. Reconstruction was enacted in no small part to enforce the provisions of the act. Blacks were elected to both state and national office and began to gain real power and infuence.

For eight years blacks were able gain a foothold and achieved a somewhat equal footing in the south, it didn’t last though as Reconstruction was ended when Grant left office. The Army was recalled back north by the new president Rutherford B. Hayes and the KKK was allowed to enforce a new kind of slavery on the freedmen who had stayed behind, and on poor whites as well, called share cropping. Later, the informal rule of the Night Riders would become the formal law of the South under a series of measures called Jim Crow, but initially the freeman's second class status was enforced with beatings and lynchings.

The underlying principle to everything that happened after Reconstruction was a series of local laws and customs called Jim Crow. People often site slavery as the cause of racial inequality in the United States but really the more significant culprit was Jim Crow. As hard as it might be to believe, Jim Corw was alive and well all the way into the 1970's. I remember going to a segregated school in California in the 1960's. The school was intergrated when I was in the third grade, I didn't understand any of it at the time, but looking back on it it seems strange at best that a small town of 2300 would have had two grammer schools.

While Reconstruction was in effect blacks were gaining in wealth and prosperity. In the west freedmen were working alongside their white counter parts in ranching and mining. All of this progress was stopped and reversed by Jim Crow. Those black communities started in Oklahoma and the west? They were all subjected to racial business practices and restrictions and were finally done in by the Depression. All of the black politicians were voted out of office when there were no troops to enforce black voting rights. Black business that had been started were burned out and forced to stay closed by threat of whippings and lynching.

Small farmers who had moved on to abandoned plantations were forced into share cropping and now not allowed to leave. The KKK became an enforcement tool for the wealthy and the attitudes of racial hatred spread in all directions. We are all still suffering the repercussions of Jim Crow to this day.

For a much more detailed discussion on the topic of Jim Crow go to: 

The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia

Next: The Ten Most Significant Battles