What Were The Causes Of The American Civil War Essay

The war aftermath in South: the former Confederacy presented a sharp contrast to the victorious north. Throughout the south, people where emotionally exhausted: many lives had been sharttered.in 1866, the state of Mississippi spent a fifth of its annual budget on artificial limbs for confederate soldiers. Property value had collapsed. In the year after the war ended, eighty-one plantations in Mississippi where sold for less than a tenth of what they had been worth in 1860. Confederate money was worthless; personal saving had vanished. Confederate general Braxton Bragg returned to his ‘’ once prosperous’’ Alabama home to find ‘’all, all was lost, except my debt.” Many of the southern cities Richmond- Atlanta Columbia were ruins, most railroads were damaged or
Andrew Carnegie used a new invention to start his steel company. John D. Rockefeller started Standard Oil. The company became a corporation. It bought small companies. This got rid of competition. Standard Oil became a monopoly. It owned 90 percent of America’s oil. No competition meant consumers had fewer choices. Monopolies could provide poor service or charge higher prices. After making large fortunes, Carnegie and Rockefeller gave millions of dollars to schools, libraries, churches, and hospitals. Factories hired many people to run machines. Factory work was boring and dangerous. Workers did the same thing for ten or twelve hours a day. They often worked in unsafe conditions. Factory workers did not make much money. Some families needed more money to survive. They sent their children to work. Factory workers formed labor unions. They had more power as a group. They wanted businesses to change. Unions wanted safer work. They wanted an eight-hour day and better pay. They did not want children to work. Unions used strikes. Businesses fought back. Some strikers were hurt or killed, but labor unions kept fighting for their