Impacts of Civil War Reconstruction

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The American Civil War drastically changed communications in America by introducing new means of communication, and improving on old ways. Before the Civil War, you would need to speak to someone in person to tell them important news, or just to chat. During an after the Civil War, there were new and more efficient ways to communicate without taking a carriage to get somewhere or sending a soldier out onto the fields to tell a general something. You could do things like send a telegraph or a letter using the Postal Service. If it’s national news, and everyone needs to know about it, like the assassination of President Lincoln, you could publish it in a newspaper. The Civil War impacted America’s communication.

The telegraph helped in winning the war, and changing America forever.

Before the Civil War, it could take leaders of a country days until they learned of an attack in a different part of the country. Telegraphs were being constructed during the Civil War. When they were done, they reached all the way to the west coast of the US. During the Civil War, Lincoln gave orders through the telegraph, asking questions to generals for more information, and sometimes, he’d speak to the generals in almost real time. After the war, telegraph lines stayed for both the use of the public, and for government and the military.

Imagine you’re a mother of a Union soldier during the Civil War. You get a letter from your son in the mail, from the US Postal Service. You’re overjoyed to hear about your son’s adventures from battle. You pick up the letter and you begin to read… All you see is a few scrawled words that are irrelevant to the rest of the letter. His letter has been censored. Censoring letters was a defensive strategy used ...

... middle of paper ...

...Richard. "Communications Overview (1850-1877)." American Eras. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Richard Layman. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. Student Resource Center - Junior. Gale. Great Valley Middle School. 24 Apr. 2014 http://find.galegroup.com/srcx/infomark.do?&source=gale&srcprod=SRCJ&userGroupName=malv12024&prodId=SRC-4&tabID=T001&docId=EJ2301500255&type=retrieve&contentSet=GSRC&version=1.0
Fox, Myron. “Censorship! War Letters” PBS “N.D” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/warletters-censorship/ 4/30/14 web.
Wheeler, Tom “In the Original Situation Room - Abraham Lincoln and the Telegraph” Civil War Studies, the Smithsonian Associates, “n.d” Web. http://civilwarstudies.org/articles/Vol_8/situation-room.shtm 4/25/14

Clinton, Catherine “The Scholastic Encyclopedia of the Civil War”, Published Sept. 1, 1999, Scholastic,
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