Professor Din and Professor Sinclair
HIST 1302 / GOVT 2305
09/20/16
Reconstruction: Report on the Condition of the South,1865
After the Civil war, a rise of Reconstruction period where there was a drastic change in government and economy across the nation. As the matter of fact, the issue of freedom for former slaves was the main issue in the South during Reconstruction Period. Whereas, most southern White people were not satisfied because of freedom for African Americans. Many freedmen could use their liberty as whole, as they could reunite with their families and claim their independence from their former masters. They even get their land back while on the other hand, many white southerners tried to murder, lynching and …show more content…
“Schurz emigrated to the United States in 1852, initially settling in Wisconsin, where he began to build a political base among the large ethnically German population” (Eyck). He also served as a general in the Union army where he traveled all around the South after the war and also spoke with hundreds of people about their loyalty to the Union and their attitudes toward emancipation. President Andrew Johnson asked Carl Schurz to investigate conditions in the defeated Confederacy. This document is a report created by him in the success of Reconstruction in the South. He begins by stating that the success of reconstruction cannot be measured by whether the Southern states enter the Union, because this is inevitable, but by the reconstruction of other aspects of southern life as well as the freedmen in the society. He also states the condition of the south after the massive civil war and how it is embracing after the …show more content…
Whereas, the freedmen’s power in society are completely in the hands of the other people. He also discusses the aftermath of the Civil War in the South, stating that everything was ruined; politically, socially and economically as well. The personal lives of many of the Southern people was hard because they do not have slaves to maintain their land and the transition between slavery and free labor will be difficult because of the fact that the only type of labor system Southerners have are known as slavery. After the Fourteenth amendment passed, the freedmen enjoyed to the fullest but white southerners created obstacles in the way. Andrew Johnson, a deeply racist politician whose conception of democracy was limited to the white population and who ended up opening the door to the Southern Black Codes of 1865-66, which attempted to return blacks to a condition close to slavery (Foner). Schurz received many inquiries about the views of the new labor system that “You cannot make the negro work, without physical compulsion.” He states that he heard the same words from so many southern people who belonged to the more intelligent