Post Civil War South Essay

After the war, the South was devastated and it was going to take a lot of money and a lot of rebuilding for it to be self-sufficient again. It financially and architecturally succeeded in reinventing itself and in the thirty five years following the war, Southern iron, steel and textile industries emerged, with Railroads leading the South’s industrial expansion. The Southern economy grew and prospered, although it could never quite compete with the North in innovations or wages. Now that there were almost 4 million freed slaves living in the South and a huge population of poor white people, there was plenty of cheap labor and business owners took full advantage of the fact. What kept the South from a strong Industrial development was the inability of the White men to work alongside the freed slaves. Attitudes toward the freed slaves had not changed and were getting progressively worse. Black Southerners were barred from working in industrial jobs and only a small percentage of White Southerners were employed in these jobs, therefore expansion could not take place. The South started on the right course and for a period of time it looked like the New South had risen but hatred towards the Black Southerners was the industrial development downfall with The South still strongly depending on agriculture as the economy stabilizer. Supposedly, the New South was based on rich natural resources, economic opportunity and increased racial equality, but after the North removed military control in the South in 1877, the Southern White Democrats went to work at changing their states constitutions and establishing legal barriers that kept the Black Southerners from voting. By 1913 new laws had been enacted, known as the Jim Crow laws, the made it unlawful for Black Southerners to comingle with White Southerners everywhere. Violence and Intimidation was the face of the New South now as Black Southerners and White Southerners competed for the same jobs. Lynching’s, beatings, false imprisonment and raping of the Black Southern women was all the freed slaves had to look forward to now, some of the same treatment many had to endure as slaves. Racial Segregation was fully embraced by the White Southerners and lthough the slaves had been freed, the South had completely failed in their quest for racial equality being a sign of the New South. http://www. civilwaracademy. com/reconstruction. html How did the culture of the Plains Indians, specifically the Lakota Sioux, change in the late 19th century? The Lakota Tribe first acquired horses in the 1700’s and it changed their way of life as they knew it. Over the next 200 years, they saw even more significant changes, but none of them good. Their original warfare between other tribes was never to acquire lands or control people but to obtain more horses, as the Lakota directly equated honor with the number of horses they had. Their warfare strategy changed as the white man encroached on their territory, threatened their buffalo and pushed them out of their lands. To them, their way of life was changing and the attitude became that of â€Å"kill or â€Å"be killed†, protecting family and possessions at any cost. Buffalo was a major source of food, shelter and material items that the Lakota relied heavily on to sustain them. As the White man encroached on the Lakota Territory, they felt that if they eradicated the Buffalo, the Lakota Tribe would be easier to manage and beat down. With the Government policy in the mid 1860’s being that of confining all Indians to reservations, the Establishment of the Great Sioux Reservation through the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty was proposed. This would drastically change their way of life and make them dependent upon the government to survive. The treaty proposed the following: * Set aside a 25 million acre tract of land for the Lakota and Dakota encompassing all the land in South Dakota west of the Missouri River, to be known as the Great Sioux Reservation; * Permit the Dakota and Lakota to hunt in areas of Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota until the buffalo were gone; * Provide for an agency, grist mill, and schools to be located on the Great Sioux Reservation; * Provide for land allotments to be made to individual Indians; and provide clothing, blankets, and rations of food to be distributed to all Dakotas and Lakota’s living within the bounds of the Great Sioux Reservation. The majority of the Lakota males did not sign this treaty and since the government did not keep their end of the bargain and broke treaty many times as it suited them, numerous battles were fought while they tried to keep their independence. Eventually the Lakota tried to live on the reservation and by the government’s guidelines, but without horses or guns, they could not hunt and the rations promised to them were either always late or didn’t show up at all. The Lakota were encouraged towards self-sufficiency by imposed farming, and the government did everything it could to â€Å"civilize† the Tribe by making them dress in American traditional clothing and outlawing their rituals and ceremonies.