Analysis Of The Fifty Years After The Civil War By David Blight

The aftermath of the Civil War shook the nation. A new way of life was beginning for the people of America. A way of life that was beautiful and free to some and absolutely devastating to the rest. The country had changed and nobody did a better job at documenting this change than the authors. The authors used this new world to explore new and unique stories as well as capturing what it was actually like living in the post-Civil War times. This paper will examine post-Civil War Literature and its importance to documenting this period in history.

At the beginning of the book, Horowitz sets up the background for his spellbinding interest in the American Civil War. Horwitz wrote this book shortly after settling in Virginia following several years as a journalist overseas. The consciousness out of which Tony Horwitz witnessed conflicts in foreign war zones for decades was imbued with an obsession, sustained since childhood, with the legacy of the American Civil War. When Tony Horwitz was 6, in the 1960's, he learned that his 101-year-old great-grandfather, Isaac Moses Perski, an immigrant from czarist Russia, was an American Civil War buff. So was Horwitz's father. Horwitz became one too. One purpose of this book is to reexamine this connection, to question why a liberal Northerner should find himself drawn to stories and figures that represent much that he has worked against in his own life.What explains this non-Southern, nonmilitary family's fascination with a horrible conflict in which their ancestors had no part? That, the first question raised by Horwitz's splendid commemoration of the war and its legacy, is never quite answered. Appropriately so, perhaps, because Horwitz gives us the Civil War in which Americans see all sorts of unresolved strife: over race, sovereignty, the sanctity of historic landscapes and who should interpret the past. One morning, he hears gunfire outside his house. It turned out to be a group of Civil War reenactors, decked out in Confederate uniforms, filming a scene

The Civil War was a major part of American History which changed the country, after the Civil War America had a greater challenge, reconstructing the Union. The period of Reconstruction led to tumultuous times for the nation. There are many reasons the United States was in Chaos after the Civil War, such as the Assassination of President Lincoln, and the 14th Amendment, etc. One of the reasons that caused the Civil War was Slavery and after the War, President Lincoln wanted to put no Slavery in the Constitution because the Emancipation Proclamation was a military action and could be potentially be rejected by Southern States. Another reason the 13th Amendment caused chaos is because the Amendment freed all slaves, many with little to no education and only knew how to work on plantations.

The Civil War caused a shift in the ways that many Americans thought about slavery and race. Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over helps readers understand how soldiers viewed slavery during the Civil War. The book is a narrative, which follows the life of Union soldier who is from Massachusetts. Chandra Manning used letters, diaries and regimental newspapers to gain an understanding of soldiers’ views of slavery. The main character, Charles Brewster has never encountered slaves. However, he believes that Negroes are inferior. He does not meet slaves until he enters the war in the southern states of Maryland and Virginia. Charles Brewster views the slaves first as contraband. He believes the slaves are a burden and should be sent back to their owners because of the fugitive slave laws. Union soldiers focus shifted before the end of the war. They believed slavery was cruel and inhumane, expressing strong desire to liberate the slaves. As the war progresses, soldiers view slaves and slavery in a different light. This paper, by referring to the themes and characters presented in Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over, analyzes how the issue of slavery and race shifted in the eyes of white Union soldiers’ during Civil War times.

What were the short-term and long-term effects of the Civil War? The Civil War produced many short-term and long-term effects. For example, the struggle of Freedmen and Reconstruction shortly after the Civil War was addressed with many short term solutions like, the Freedmen’s Bureau, the 10% Plan. and the Wade-Davis Bill. There also times like, the battle over Reconstruction, where the pure tension and disagreements throws the U.S. into pure chaos with the assassination of Lincoln and not much gets done due to the back and forth arguments between Johnson and Republicans. Although, the end of Reconstruction presents a myriad of long term effects which will radically change America like, the KKK and Plessy V. Ferguson promoting racism and the election of Hayes in 1876. From 1863-1896, the United States was completely divided and was going through Reconstruction in an attempt to unite the North and South after the Civil War to prevent other countries from attacking America. After the Civil War, the struggle to rebuild the Nation, the battle over Reconstruction, and its inevitable end produced a plethora of long-term and short-term effects which would change America forever.

Yankee invaders between 1877-1850 subjugated the Southern way of life. The degeneration of liberty begun with the North’s ideology of abolishment of slavery, the election of Abraham Lincoln, the disapproval of sovereign succession, the invasion of the Confederate States of America, and the torment of military districts. Laws unjustly created to suppress the white Southerners. These condemnations lasted for over twenty years. This essay will highlight all of these atrocities, and finally will demonstrate that through all this pain and suffering Southern patriotic dignity remained intact.

As David Blight says in his novel, Race and Reunion, after the Civil War and emancipation, Americans were faced with the overwhelming task of trying to understand the relationship between “two profound ideas—healing and justice.” While he admits that both had to occur on some level, healing from the war was not the same “proposition” for many whites, especially veterans, as doing justice for the millions of emancipated slaves and their descendants (Blight 3). Blight claims that African Americans did not want an apology for slavery, but instead a helping hand. Thus, after the Civil War, two visions of Civil War memory arose and combined: the reconciliationist vison, which focused on the issue of dealing with the dead from the battlefields, hospitals, and prisons, and the emancipationist vision, which focused on African Americans’ remembrance of their own freedom and in conceptions of the war as the “liberation of [African Americans] to citizenship and Constitutional equality” (Blight 2).

In “Reconstruction Revisited”, Eric Foner reexamines the political, social, and economic experiences of black and white Americans in the aftermath of the Civil War. With the help of many historian works, Foner gives equal representation to both sides of the Reconstruction argument.

In a ten-state campaign, Tony Horwitz sets out on an investigative adventure to find out why people still care about the Civil War. Horwitz, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and a staff writer for The New Yorker (at the time of publishing) travels throughout the southern states, conducting interviews with prominent Civil War thinkers and local men and women about their passion for the war, and attending different events put on by groups dedicated to the memory of the war. While he doesn’t find a definitive answer for his question, Horwitz presents often unthinkable accounts from different people and the source of their passion and remembrance for the Civil War.

In the period after the civil war there were many consequences in the economy in such categories as agriculture, labor, industrialization, and transportation. Many of these economic categories took a hit because many suppliers, work areas, and and employees were hurt or destroyed during the war. It took many years after the end of the Civil War for the agricultural industry, labor industry, industrial industry, and transportation industry to regain their footing in the economic world. Even then some of the industries would forever be changed by the things that the great Civil War caused in our country.

The Lost Cause was believed to be a myth to provide justification for white political power (p. 341). Many southern organizations defended Southern Historical Society, the United Confederate Veterans Association, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy (p. 341). A literacy and intellectual movement, which was the Lost Cause, that sought to reconcile the traditional Southern white society to the defeat of the Confederate States of America in the Civil War (Foster, G. M. 2002). Majority of those who supported the movement were confederate leaders who were defeated by the union army by overwhelming force and not by their military skills. The Lost Cause came from white southern who sought consolation for losses beyond their control to betrayals of their heroes (Foster, G.M. 2002).

The last shots of the Civil War rang out in 1865, but the battle for its meaning remains very much alive. Following the unqualified devastation which engulfed the Southern States who had aspired to create a republic founded on slavery, the survivors were faced with the overwhelming task of justifying their actions for future generations. These efforts ultimately came to fruition in a set of concepts which historians would later define as the “Myth of the Lost Cause”. One key tenet of this remarkably persistent and pervasive mindset is that of the relationship between Southern politics and the balance of states’ versus federal rights. Realizing that they were on the wrong side of history in terms of their support of slavery, proponents

The Civil War is known as a turning point in America, the road to ending slavery, while first turning a nation against each other.

More than sixty years ago William Faulkner proclaimed in his novel Requiem of a Nun that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past” (Faulkner). These words reign especially true regarding the impact of the American Civil War (1861-1865). The reasons for the conflict were complex and numerous, but mostly controversial. The men who fought in the War were essentially deciding whether nearly 13% of the population (and their descendants) would continue in the United States in a condition of permanent, forced servitude. The nation had come to a point where either slavery would be legal everywhere or nowhere—the country could no longer vacillate on the issue.

In the American history, there are different types of war does this country has to faced because of issues that effected other life. After the war, the country sees huge different in the country’s economy and changes into social environment. The American Civil War, widely known in the United States as simply the Civil War as civil war fought from 1861 to 1865 to independence for the Confederacy. The Civil War of 1861 – 1865 resolved tow fundamental questions that we never did in the American History. This is tension between the Northern and Southern States on issues including states’ right and slavery right. The War between the States, as the Civil War was know as brother against brother. In the War, there are more solider killed then than