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How Did The Civil War Changed American Society

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Contrary to popular believe, even though the Civil War drastically changed American society, it did not originally intend to end slavery. Rather, discourse about emancipation developed throughout the war. In 1863, a Minnesota soldier accordingly wrote, “I have never been in favor of the abolition of slavery until since this war has determined me in the conviction that it is a greater sin than our Government is able to stand—and now I go in for a war of emancipation…” (McPherson, 299). In the wake of the Civil War, Union soldiers strictly fought for the preservation of the Union, an institution built on flawed ideas. The brutality of the war led soldiers to sympathize with African Americans and thus, redirect the war effort to end slavery. However, since freedom did not automatically guarantee equality for African Americans, the United States had to rewrite social, economic, and political policies in order to include African Americans (McPherson, 292).
While it is necessary to rewrite these institutions, people do not have to accept these changes. Therefore, what motivated the Union to free slaves? The Union agreed to free the …show more content…
Throughout the war, Union soldiers needed African Americans to succeed and so, how, if at all, did the treatment of African Americans change after the war? Even after the war, the period of Reconstruction, the United States granted rights and privileges to African Americans only to punish the South. Nevertheless, the South retaliated against the new social, political, and economic policies including African Americans. White supremacist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, originated in the South to combat the changes in American society following the Civil War. The conflict between northerners and southerners after the Civil War represented an extension and reinvention of conflicts that already existed between the North and the

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