Civil War Reconstruction Research Paper

With the Civil War over, the nation faced the difficult problems of rebuilding the South, assisting the freed slaves, reintegrating the Southern states into the Union, and deciding who would direct the Reconstruction process. The South was economically devastated and socially revolutionized by emancipation. As slave owners reluctantly confronted the end of slave labor, blacks took their first steps in freedom. Black churches and freedmen’s schools helped the former slaves begin to shape their own destiny. The new President Andrew Johnson was politically inept and personally contentious, and attempted to implement a moderate plan of Reconstruction, along the lines originally suggested by Lincoln. Who fell victim to Southern whites’ severe