Civil War And Reconstruction Essay Example for Free

Civil state of war And reconstruction EssayThe Civil War is the approximately widely written about event in American history and Reconstruction is the close mis-understood and least appreciated subject within this wider issue. well-nigh stack would prefer to escape into the heroic exploits of the battles that were fought than deal with the difficult social problems that the former en slaved population had to deal with. I am protracting this essay since I believe that the African-Americans have been done a great disservice by the Nation.As a people they were forcibly brought to this land, they were enslaved in an illegal and immoral system, and then they were cast out by that same Nation ostensibly afterward having their freedom returned. What happened to them was not fair and there is a debt due to them. I hope to show in this paper few of the offenses that I find glaring. What was Reconstruction supposed to accomplish? Was it supposed to provide a new economic start for the freed peoples? Was it supposed to redo and reorder the state governments that had seceded?Was it supposed to prosecute and imprison former Confede roll officials? These questions were never fully answered, and for the most part they were never even adequately addressed. Liberals and African-Americans are more sensitive to the burden of the unfulfilled declare of Emancipation and Reconstruction, duration so-c eached realists and conservatives proclaim that too much help has already been given (think favorable Action). The truth though, does not lie neatly in the middle between these extremes.Horrific sermon was an unpleasant fact for the enslaved peoples, and they were denied an equal opportunity to enter fully the American body politic. To make matters worsened this bitter cup of denied citizenship is still too often a fact today. Recently, the folk singer track Dylan (Rolling Stone, Sept. 2012) has said the country will never be able to rid itself of the shame of cre ation founded on the backs of slaves. I would like to rehearse some of the story of Slavery, some critical events in the war and afterwards, and to offer a reasonable suggestion for Restitution.The introduction of African Slavery to these shores was an unplanned event although the Spanish and the Lusitanian had been involved with this trade for most 100 yrs in this hemisphere before it appeared here. These are some of the highlights of that practice here The first African slaves were 19 people, who in 1619 were captured by Dutch sailors from Spanish slave traders. Subsequently they were sold to the colonists at Jamest receive for food. Initially, these people worked as indentured handmaidens and they ultimately gained their freedom after completing a work contract for the colonists. The phrase indentured servant is misleading in this sequel since its modern usage means someone who works for a fixed period and is then manumitted. This was not the arrangement that was employ t o the African captives who arrived later than these initial individuals did, since the practice gradually evolved to treat the adults as easily as the children of the female slaves as also enslaved people (partus sequitur ventrum)2.Another misleading statement is that the term servant was widely used in the South, even past 1865, to refer to African people who were actually enslaved. Therefore, not much credence should be put into the seemingly benign phrase of servant3 when applied to these unfortunate human beings. The cost of this labor was attractive to the colonists since by 1638 an enslaved African laborer could be purchased for $27 while a European indentured servant cost a planter $255 for one years work.4 The economic appeal of enslaved African laborers became the norm and quickly spread throughout the colonies. afterward twenty years, ordinances legitimizing enslavement were commonplace in almost every colony and the practice had morphed into bondage for life, or more pr operly, chattel slavery. 5 These practices were immoral they had no place in a respectable society. The mortal(a) tendency to view the Africans through the white supremacist lens quickly became dominant and was a concomitant of this chattel slavery. This was punctuated by the knowledge that Europeans were never enslaved while most enslaved people were Africans. The skin color of the enslaved became a silver-tongued marker that fit in well with the culturally supremacist view of the European colonists.In this section I try to show how the African Slave System, after gaining a foothold went on to come the most important part of the economy of the new Nation As the profitability of the colonists agricultural enterprises quickly rose, it was all important(p) to procure a sufficient number of workers since labor rookages were a constant headache. 7 Enslavement of the natural Peoples had bring forth steadily more problematic and by the 1750s this practice had ceased altogether. Eur opean workers were both big-ticket(prenominal) and tended to leave their employers to start plantations of their own, or to return home.Therefore, a more reliable source of economically viable labor became a necessity, and that baleful need coincided with the rise of the Trans- Atlantic Slave Trade from Africa. This phenomenon was heaviest during the 16th through the 19th centuries,9 when an estimated 11 million captives from Africa were ultimately landed at Western Hemispheric destinations out of 15 million who had been loaded onto these horror-filled ships. 0 The differences in these numbers were human beings who had died en route through inadequate treatment meted out by the slave traders. The attrition rate during these voyages was a startling 0. 36 persons for every person who disembarked in the New World. We should not forget these stark truths. About 650,000 720,000 apprehended persons of the numbers shown above,11 it is thought, were brought into what was to become the U nited States. Employing the attrition rate noted before we can estimate that about 245,000 people were deep in thought(p) from the aggregate number of captives bound for these shores.Given the losses in the war that was to come its almost as though the Divine Being had decided to punish this country for these sins at a rate of three-to-one. By 1860, the survivors had profitd through natural growth to more than 4. 000,000 enslaved and freed peoples12 and were primarily located in the states that were to become part of the Confederacy (76% there and another 18% in the Border States13). What fueled this enormous increase in the numbers of the enslaved was that starting in the 1790s the revolution of the cotton gin and the corresponding startle in cotton exports demanded an exponential rise in subservient labor.So what had started as a aboveboard small-scale agricultural experiment, primarily growing foodstuffs, had metastasized into an industrial system practically keeping the Nati on purposeless with its lucrative revenues. Before the war began the cotton trade or more realistically King like constituted 2/3 rds of the wealth of the Nation. 14 What motivated these slaveholders to import and retain so umteen African Laborers besides the economics? Evidently the lure of being a member of an aristocratic leisured-class was appealing.Most of the apologists for these slaveholders had classical education, and they employed arguments from Greek and Roman Antiquity, which portrayed slavery as a prominent voice of the civilizing mission they were engaged in. Their lower income regional compatriots, although not slave owners themselves, were eager to emulate this conduct, which they viewed as worthy and status-filled. The Southern way of life was born it was profitable for the elite it was an identity vehicle for the lower classes but it was hellish for the enslaved.Further, it was built upon the most cruel and involuntary system imaginable which had as a tower the dissolution of the Africans families both here and in their original homelands. The American governmental establishment at all levels -bears the greatest guilt for this outrageous affront. It is important to recall that these slave traders and slaveholders were in many cases prominent members of the mingled governments that acceded to or promoted this horrific conduct. The enslaved people, it should be remembered, did not voluntarily agree to be forcibly dragged to these shores.Despite the claims make by the Slavocracy that they were performing a civilizing mission by maintaining this obscene practice, the only positive good was that the lives of the slaveholders was being enhanced EXASPERATION After Slavery had become such an integral component of the Nation, regional differences in the attitudes towards that infernal system began to be felt all around. Exasperation was the order of the day but the African enslaved people were suffering the most There were three sets of play ers in this tragedy the Northern Whites the Southern Whites (slaveholders and on-slave holders) and the enslaved Africans. It is uniquely true that the enslaved peoples did not create nor did they benefit from this monstrous catastrophe. The other groups however, either benefited in a account way or thought their social status was improved through the bacillus of racism. Exasperation however, was dual-lane by all to some degree. The Northerners became progressively more dissatisfied with their impotence following the Revolution while the Southerners were increasingly anxious that the North was lining up new Free Soil states that would nullify their choose majorities in Congress.The enslaved though, were in anguish since everything that people could cherish was systematically being denied to them after they had been wrenched away from their homes. The enslaved increasingly attempted to build an alternate life, sub-rosa as it were, by fleeing their masters or by winning in sabota ge or willful incoherence. 15 They also constructed a parallel universe of their own by founding separate places of worship (the Whites did not allow the enslaved to be an equal part of their devotional services) and their own systems of less-than-formal education. t was during this period that it could be said that a new genus was born the African American. What they did not have was any significant power over their futures except as ad hoc combinations that could be assembled, when conditions permitted. They expressed this through manifestations such as the Underground Railroad16 (which saw 6,000 30,000 African-American flee figures are imprecise), variant slave rebellions (some bloody), and a general unwillingness to be smothered by enslavement (conduct just short of insurrection).Another group, though small in numbers, was the Free Blacks. These people became the vanguard of the African-American middle and headmaster classes that successfully operated between the seams of the larger society. The actions of this sub-group were able to relieve some of the pressures that had built up in the larger body of enslaved African-Americans and help to point the way for a more prosperous life for all.