Reconstruction to The South

The South was destroyed after they had surrendered.Many men after the war became disabled and returned home after the war to their farms destroyed and the cities they lived in ruined. A lot of people who fought in the war lost some if not all family members. Those who lost family were devastated. Many of them faced starvation. Most of their animals had ran away or had been killed. When there had been food available it was hard to distribute it.

Mary Chesnut had wrote in her diary about the food. She said " We are shut in here. All railroads and bridges were gone. We are cut off from the world." Financial situation had began to fail before the war and it struggled even more now. Banks and business owners went bankrupt because people couldn't pay the money back. Confederate General Braxton Bragg found that " all, all was lost, except my debts."

For most of the former slaves, the freedom to travel without a pass was the first step to a long road to equal rights and a new life. A South Carolina woman explained, " I must go, if I stay here I'll never know I'm free." Many African Americans left the white-controlled churches and created their own congregations.

President Lincoln wanted to reunite the nation q uickly and painlessly as possible. before the war had ended, he had a plan for reentering the southern states. Any southern state with at least 10% of its voters making the pledge could have their own state government and be readmitted into the Union.