The Reconstruction Period
And it’s Impact Following the Civil War
History 121: American History to 1877
10 December 2011

The Reconstruction era was the attempt to restore the Union after the Civil War or The
War for Southern Independence. Its perception was viewed differently by Southerners,
Northerners, and newly freed former slaves. After the Union won the war in 1865, their job was to begin the reconstruction of the Unites States. This era started at the end of the Civil War in
1865 and ended in1877. The goal was to reunite the southern states and ensure freedom and civil rights of the southern blacks.
It could be more accurate to say that Reconstruction began with the war. From the moment the war began, Lincoln focused on the problem of reconstructing the Union. Equally important, from the start of the war, the Confederacy was shrinking in size as United States
Soldiers occupied parts of the South.1
Reconstruction was a bitter pill to the devastated South. The Union Armies destroyed southern towns, farms, railroads and confiscated private property. To learn and understand the atrocities committed by the Union Army, one has to look no further than the memoirs of General
William Tecumseh Sherman. In one example, General Sherman and his Army are on their infamous march to the sea where he finds himself bivouacked on a southern plantation. “Through inquiry he finds out that it belonged to Confederate General Howell Cob. He states that of course we confiscated his property and found it rich in corn, beans, pea-nuts and sorghum-molasses. Extensive fields were all around the house; I sent back word to General Davis to explain who’s plantation it was and instructed him to spare nothing.”2 The argument could be made that because the property belonged to a Confederate General, then Sherman’s order could be perceived as