The Limits of Freedom

The Limits of Freedom

Introduction

The period of the history of the United States from 1865 to 1918 begins with the end of the Civil War (1861-1865), which opposed the Northern industrial states to the Confederate States, including the issue of slavery, and ends with the end of WWI. It marked in particular by the Reconstruction, which ended with the Compromise of 1877 and the withdrawal of northern troops from Southern states. The period of the history of the United States that took place between the end of the war and the early twentieth century sometimes called "golden period" (Gilded Age), and marked by long prosperity of the country in many areas (economy, industrialization). However, this period extended until the Second World War also characterized by a gradual withdrawal of rights acquired by black Americans at the end of the war in the Southern States, which reached its climax during the arrest of Plessy in 1896 , which entering the national segregation in public transportation. The Great Depression also affected America, which comes out shortly before the First World War.

Discussion

The aftermath of Civil War and reconstruction (1865-1877)

The period following the Civil War and who sees the reinstatement of the secessionist states in the union, and the policy pursued towards them during this period called the Reconstruction. Abraham Lincoln (assassinated in 1865) advocates a reasonable policy, but the immense human cost of war and social change brings it brought the Congress to block the readmission of the rebel states in the Union without preconditions met. A series of laws enacted for this purpose: a loyalty oath required from the southern populations. Slavery officially abolished in 1865 by the thirteenth amendment.

After the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox, the Union troops occupied the former secessionist states; the military organized a food distribution to malnourished people. The federal government launched a Loan which lasted until 1877, when Northern whites stop to protect blacks; it is the tacit compromise of 1877. Agricultural land divided, each freed slave 40 acres obtained in principle and a mule. But soon the South dominated by carpetbaggers, Union soldiers or businessmen who bought Northern plantations or portions of railroads for a pittance and employing blacks as sharecroppers or tenant farmers.

Southern whites (the Scalawags) adhere to the Republican Party to obtain positions in government alongside the carpetbaggers and former slaves. Whites who supported the Confederacy did not vote. To vote you must swear. Some blacks migrate north to find work as a laborer. The scale of destruction caused by the invasion of the South, his defeat, followed by the social changes of the defeated States after the war, give rise to a lasting bitterness in the South against the government of the United States . The old masters and whites remained loyal to the South respond with violence by forming societies terrorists (Ku Klux Klan, the camellia flower) and try to kill the carpetbaggers, the Scalawags and blacks of the administration. The army still manages to master at first.

However once the troops leave the South Union in 1877, the Bourbons, and called ...