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Reconstruction

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Tatyana Dotson Part II: Report on the Condition of the South (1865)

5. According to Schurz, the overall goal of Reconstruction is to reconstruct southern society and bring it back into American Society as a whole. He also mentions that it is also about the relationship between the constitution and the general public. 6. Schurz says the transition between the freedman and the south is so difficult to achieve because the south feels that the Union was so harsh and vengeful to them, and now they are changing their way of life so drastically. He touches on this by saying “in the midst of this critical period of transition, the power which originated the revolution is expected to turn over its whole future development to another power which from the beginning was hostile to it and has never yet entered into its spirit”. This just shows how it was already problematic. Added to this, the now freedman have to fend and protect themselves in an already angry and racist environment. Schurz explains this by saying “…leaving the class in whose favor it was made completely without power to protect itself and to take an influential part in that development.” 7. Southern soldiers also faced many problems when they came back home. Schurz states that “They found, many of them, their homesteads destroyed, their farms devastated, their families in distress”. The soldiers came back to an entire new world that was unfamiliar and stressful, which cause the embarrassment. Another problem was for soldiers who came back home to little opportunities. “Those that were less unfortunate found, at all events, an impoverished and exhausted community which had but little to offer them.” 8. When Schurz says, “one good harvest made by unadulterated free labor in the south would have a better effect than all the oaths that have been taken” he is saying that maybe it

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