Civil War Today

The Long Term Effects of the American Civil War

1865 - Present

If you are here only to see Billy the Kid's grave, the pictures are midway down the page.

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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 Courthouse, 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 clear.

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 mid 1900’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 lionized in the early movies were black. Freedmen showed up in the boomtowns as labors and prospectors.

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

Unfortunately, at the same time Forrest was starting his club another group was forming called the Night Riders: they wore white sheets to hide their identities. The Night Riders were dedicated to 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 became completely intertwined. Ultimately, Forrest renounced his organization and walked away from it.

Reconstruction

1866 - 1877

With roving bands of white marauders terrorizing the southern countryside now 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.

For eight years blacks gained 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 and the KKK was allow to enforce a new kind of slavery on the freedmen who had stayed behind, and on poor whites as well, called share cropping.

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 into the 1970's.

While Reconstruction was in effect blacks were gaining in wealth and prosperity. In the west black were working alongside their white counter parts. All of this progress stopped and was reversed by Jim Crow. Those black communities started in Oklahoma and the west? They were all destroyed by racial business practices that guaranteed the communities failure. 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: