Essay Paper #2

Gilbert Jimenez

HIST3193

Dr. Gregg Michel

November 9, 2017
 Paper #2

To adapt and overcome a struggle one must have perseverance, attitude, and be resilient. For a

mass group of people such as those who live in cities, states, or regions of a country, in this case

residence of the Southern states, it takes more than just a positive behavior; a society must have the

proper resources, structure, leadership, and most important of all capital. From the Civil War all the way

through the Stock Market crash of 29, the South had endured many struggles and difficulties. Even with

end of the Civil War and the country becoming whole again, Southern states as well as their citizens

were being viewed in a negative way from their own countrymen in the North, resulting the people in

the South to become isolated and to restructure themselves on their own. Economically, socially, and

culturally, the South was very well a different section of the country after the 1860s all the way through

the 1930s. Citizens of Southern areas like Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and other states struggled

through many difficulties and hardships such as poverty due to economic issues, adjust to new political

issues that were brought among them such as freed blacks, and adopt and develop a new culture to

bring in capital.

Late into the Civil War as Union troops began to advance into the Confederate States, cities and

fields such as those in Mississippi, were desolated, flattened, and pillaged by Grants men and artillery.

The siege of Vicksburg in 1863 Union soldiers marched through Mississippi burning houses, killing

livestock, and trampling crops. After the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox which resulted in the

end of the Civil War just three days after, many Confederated soldiers began their long journey home

without ever anticipating the struggles and hardship waiting for them; with no man power to harvest

crops, their currency viewed as worthless, and their livestock and equipment stolen from soldiers who

ran sacked their property, these once successful farmers and planters became desperate.1 Not only did

1
Oshinsky, David. Worse Than Slavery (Simon &Schuster New York,1996) page 12
military soldiers have an impact on plantation owners but politics played a role on the downsize of

Southern economy. With Emancipation set forth, slaves were freed from their plantation owners; to

Southerners this meant loss of human property and disruption of labor supply. It wasnt just post-Civil

War that farmers and plantation owners were affected economically, but with the crash of 1929 which

sparked the beginning of the Great Depression, the South experienced a severe and serious economic

crisis. Farmers suffered from low prices and high debt during the 1920s. Their main cash crop, which

was still cotton, dropped in prices causing economic misery in the Southwest region and lower valley of

Mississippi. Other sources such as real estates, tourism, businesses, and industries fell into shambles.

The Depression caused the entire country to suffer yet the poverty and economic standards were more

sever in the South than any other region of the United States.

At the end of The Civil War not only did farmers and plantation owners lose their rights as slave

owners but they were expected by their government, politicians and fellow countrymen from the North

to live and be among the new freed blacks; this did not seat well at all. Much of the population in the

South believed that just because slavery was abolished and the blacks were freed, it did not mean that

both whites and blacks were equal or should share equal opportunities. States like Mississippi moved

toward a formal segregation of the races. Examples of these separations occurred on railroad carts,

walkways, restaurants, stores, and any other establishments. Many Southerners viewed the freedman

as a symbol and a constant reminder of two things; they had lost the war and any new decisions would

have to be followed. Hostility and hatred began to rise against the blacks. 2A writer from the New York

Tribune, Whitelaw Reid was struck by the hostility he witnessed down South in Tennessee, Georgia,

Alabama, and Louisiana. He wrote, they hated the negro freemanhowever kind they may have been

to negro property, they were virulently vindictive against a property that had escaped from their

control. Emancipation definitely ended slavery but it did not destroy the assumptions of which it was

2
Oshinsky, David. Worse Than Slavery. Page #14
based. Hatred groups began to emerge displaying violence against blacks; the biggest group by far was

the Ku Klux Klan which was comprised of white men from all classes and regions of Mississippi. There

attacks were mostly random and spontaneous but they concentrated their attacks on freedmen who

would go out and vote, those who ran for office, participated in juries and who would testify against

whites. But they didnt only attack the black population; the Klan also concentrated their attacks on

Northern whites, specifically teachers who would travel to the South to educate the freed blacks. Just

one of many actions that separated the South from the rest of the nation.3

Slavery was not the only thing that ended in the South after the Civil War. For the majority of

people their way of life was changed as well. Many had to come to the realization that things were

going to be different, changes were going to be made, and most of all new developments were going to

occur in order to bring their proud states back to a prosper economical level; the South would have to

become an industrialized region. During the 1880s the development of cotton mills became a solution

to the poverty and underdevelopment of the South. A man by the name Henry Grady developed the

idea The New South which promised a refurbished and remade society. Henry believed that the South

possessed a soul that had the breath of a new life and a consciousness of growing power and

prosperity. Southern states soon began to embrace urbanization, industrialization, and commercial

agriculture. New opportunities were soon introduced such as manufacturing, mining, lumbering and

many forms of industries. New railroad lines were being built causing the railroad system in the South

to grow at a massive pace within two decades just prior to the Civil War. By 1890, nine out of every ten

countries in the South had tracks running across their borders. Not only did the railroad bring in many

job opportunities for the people in the South but it also increased and boosted the tourism industry as

3
Oshinsky, David M. Worse Than Slavery. Page 26
well, bringing in more money for towns and cities. Other industries such as mining, lumbering, cotton

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textiles, and tobacco opened up new ways to make money for the South.

To say that Southern states such as Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, and the rest of

the Confederate states underwent challenges and experienced difficulties after the Civil would be

putting it in simple terms; the fact is the population in the South endured economical struggles, social

hardships, political changes, and had to develop and reconstruct their very way of life. No more could

they depend on slave labor or rely simply alone on their cash crop cotton. Changes were all around

them and not only were these challenges hard to overcome, but they required a large amount of time to

be accomplished. It took decades, and even in some cases a century, for the economy to rise, for new

industries to boom, and for individuals to acknowledge and accept the new changes that were being

accepted into the country.

4
Link, William A. Southern Crucible: The Making of an American Region (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)
page 327