By the time Lee had surrendered to Grant at Appomattox on 1865, thousands of acres of land had been ruined and thousands of items given or stolen for use by either Army. This devastation left an impact on hundreds of people, including the people of Southside Virginia. However, in 1870 the Southern Claims Commission was created to help Union sympathizers living in the South regain the property that had been taken from them by the Union Army. Through the use of these petitions, we can get a view into what kinds of things the Union Army was interested in taking as told by Southerners. More importantly though, it gives historians an idea of what kinds of things were important to the people living in Southside Virginia during the time of the Civil War. The Southern Claims Commission was created by an act of Congress on March 3, 1781. The commission was created to allow Union supporters living in the South a chance to gain back the things that were given to or stolen by the Union army during the course of the war. All a southern had to do was submit a petition with a list of these things, prove that they were loyal to the union before and after succession and were actually opposed to succession. Usually the petition not only contained a letter from the person writing the petition but from a list of other to people who were witness to the items being taken or that they were for the Union. Throughout the time the commission was in service, there were about 22,298 petitions claiming $60,258,150.44. Also about 220,000 witnesses came forward for claimants. If the claimant claimed less than $10,000 worth of property then there would be a hearing throughout anywhere in the South. However, if it ended up being more than $10,000 the claim... ... middle of paper ... ...er would be; Food, Animals, Goods, Household items and finally tools. However, this is only based off the amount of money the people claimed they were owed. Each person that lived in each county were all different and had different things that they considered important. Also, it is not clear whether everyone that had things taken reported them to the Southern Claims Commission. Since this is not known, it is really hard to tell whether or not the things asked for by the claimants in each county can give us an accurate look at what was really important. Even though that is true, going off what information was given, it is clear that each county has similar and different thoughts in what is most important. Looking at the data does however, lets us know that things such as food and animals were among the top things needed and wanted for survival during the Civil War.
General Richard Sherman’s march to the sea has just finished. After successful capturing Atlanta, Georgia, General Sherman directed his Union army to Savannah, Georgia. Along the way, northerners wreaked havoc on Southern cotton mills and destroy train tracks while completely uprooting 20 percent of Georgian plantations. This effectively halted the Confederate’s means of transportation and economic structure subsequently w...
The American Civil war is considered to be one of the most defining moments in American history. It is the war that shaped the social, political and economic structure with a broader prospect of unifying the states and hence leading to this ideal nation of unified states as it is today. In the book “Confederates in the Attic”, the author Tony Horwitz gives an account of his year long exploration through the places where the U.S. Civil War was fought. He took his childhood interest in the Civil War to a new level by traveling around the South in search of Civil War relics, battle fields, and most importantly stories. The title “Confederates in the Attic”: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War carries two meanings in Tony Horwitz’s thoughtful and entertaining exploration of the role of the American Civil War in the modern world of the South. The first meaning alludes to Horwitz’s personal interest in the war. As the grandson of a Russian Jew, Horwitz was raised in the North but early in his childhood developed a fascination with the South’s myth and history. He tells readers that as a child he wrote about the war and even constructed a mural of significant battles in the attic of his own home. The second meaning refers to regional memory, the importance or lack thereof yet attached to this momentous national event. As Horwitz visits the sites throughout the South, he encounters unreconstructed rebels who still hold to outdated beliefs. He also meets groups of “re-enactors,” devotees who attempt to relive the experience of the soldier’s life and death. One of his most disheartening and yet unsurprising realizations is that attitudes towards the war divide along racial lines. Too many whites wrap the memory in nostalgia, refusing...
“Petersburg”. Saving America’s Civil War Battlefields: Civil War Trust. Civil War Trust. 2013. Web. 4 March 2014.
Throughout the American Civil War, the north proved victorious and superior to the south. The Union had the power and wealth, and, “he who has the money has the power” proved so as the north defeated the south and embraced the trophy of power. There were many key factors in this accomplishment, the factories, the money, the resources, the commanders, the manpower, the skill and determination, but most importantly, the weapons.
The Civil War was period of change in American history. Following the warfare, congress established a federal agency named the Freedmen’s Bureau to facilitate the freed people’s transition from slavery to freedom. Southern blacks encountered the worst chaos, displacement, illnesses, poverty and epidemics, which were limiting to the bureaus successes during reconstruction (Finley 2013, 82). During the war, lack of basic needs and medicine hindered the efforts of improving economic social and political freedom. As a result, the Freedmen’s Bureau was designed to help black southerners transition from slavery to freedom. The challenges faced during this transition were enormous, as the civil war had ruined the region completely. The farms faced destruction during the war and huge amounts of capital depleted in the war. When the civil war ended, the social order of the region was chaotic and slave owners as well as their former slaves were forced to interact socially in a different way than before (Finley 2012, 82). The Freedmen’s Bureau was a unique effort by the federal government to improve the social wellbeing of the American nation. Major General Oliver Howard headed the Free...
In James McPherson’s novel, What They Fought For, a variety of Civil War soldier documents are examined to show the diverse personal beliefs and motives for being involved in the war. McPherson’s sample, “is biased toward genuine fighting soldiers” (McPherson, 17) meaning he discusses what the ordinary soldier fought for. The Confederacy was often viewed as the favorable side because their life style relied on the war; Confederates surrounded their lives with practices like slavery and agriculture, and these practices were at stake during the war. On the other hand, Northerners fought to keep the country together. Although the Civil War was brutal, McPherson presents his research to show the dedication and patriotism of the soldiers that fought and died for a cause.
The Confederacy’s agrarian economy contrasted with the Union’s industrial society in ways that ultimately became handicaps during the war. During the first half of the nineteenth century, while the North
Book Title: The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research. Contributors: Robin Higham - editor, Steven E. Woodworth - editor. Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 1996
As the Civil War ended, according to Norton et al., America was a nation in need of “healing, justice, and physical rebuilding” (465). The war had left
Part of the mythology every schoolchild in the United States learns…is that the colony of Virginia achieved quick prosperity upon the basis of slaves and tobacco. Thus, “the South” is assumed to have existed as an initial settlement, with little change until the cataclysm of the Civil War in 1861.
More confederates than unions were illiterate due to the fact that most held professional or white-collard jobs (36). To make the Union soldiers sample fair sense most blacks couldn’t read or write, 2 who could were included in the sample (36). The levels of patriotism differed from the upper and lower south given to the fact that the upper south were mainly cotton states. The confederates felt as if it was a “rich mans woar but the poor man has to do the fifting” (16). The confederates were mainly fighting for “independence, property and way of life” (27). Some characteristics the soldiers had in common were McPherson’s calculations for the Union. He came to seeing that out of 562 Union soldier’s letters read only 67 percent voice strong patriotic motives. This is the same as the two-thirds of Confederates. As a result from reading McPherson’s book, research showed that the Union and Confederate soldiers expressed about the same degree of patriotic and ideological convictions. Even though they both had different reasons for fighting the levels of sincerity and dedication in their notes were
...h, and then four years later, his same devotion to principle focused on mending the torn Union. It is here that Connolly and Burrows identify the key irony of the Lost Cause as they exclaim, " The Vindication of the Confederacy rested heavily upon its supreme hero, and in the process, Robert E. Lee was robbed of much of his southernism"(95).
In the years following the Civil War, it was a tumultuous time for America and it's citizen's. In the southern states, people were dealing with not just the loss of their slaves, but also social upheaval, as well as the rebuilding of an economy that had largely been destroyed. In the north, we have the struggle of the common factory worker and the saga of the early industrial age, as well as the early beginnings of the labor union and the struggles that came with the formation of those organizations. In the west, those that chose to be beneficiaries of the Homestead Act were cultivating their 160 acres of land, as well as facing the challenges of unpredictable weather, lack of good soil and in the end, their own lack of skill.
“I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered” written by Robert E. Lee in 1866. Monuments celebrate origins. They demonstrate a community’s symbolic honoring of events and people for qualities it finds indispensable to its identity. But the ones in Virginia do not. They represent a various amount of These confederate monuments ought to be placed in a more private area for individuals who want to view them can. Likewise, these monuments influence individuals to feel awkward in their consistently lives. A few people differ and feel that these remembered monuments not be brought down, and should stay up.
In 1860 about 400,000 white families owned approximately 4 million slaves. Owners of large plantations and farms grew crops for the market and also for home use. Cotton became the most important crop to grow in the United States. By the time of the Civil War, 4.9 million bales of cotton were being harvested yearly and a good portion of it was being transferred to the North. Slaves played an important role for the South, as they used them for cheap laborer and could make a quick profit from it.