QUESTIONS ON CIVIL WAR



Questions on Civil War

Questions on Civil War

Q1: Factors of Confederacy's defeat in Civil War

Despite early Confederate victories at Bull Run and on the western front in Missouri in 1861, the Union Army's vast resources—of leadership, military might, and economic power—would ultimately overwhelm the Confederate Army and spell defeat for the South, which surrendered to Union forces in 1865 (Thomas, 1979).

The Confederacy, by contrast, never managed an effective policy. It used a combination of interest-bearing bonds; a 10 percent “tax-in-kind” assessed on livestock, tobacco, and other crops; and direct seizure of goods. As a result, the inflation rate in the South was higher than in the North, running 8000 percent by the end of the war. Not only was Confederate fiscal policy inadequate, it greatly exacerbated internal dissent within the Confederacy. Some historians consider it a significant factor in the South's defeat (Thomas, 1979).

Q2: Reconstruction: A success or a failure

The end of the south's failed quest for independence, the destruction of its peculiar institution of slavery, and the death knell of secession as a viable political theory, resulted in the need to remake southern institutions and society. From the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and Abraham Lincoln's generous Ten Per Cent Plan in 1864 culminating in the outcome of the controversial election of 1876, the Republican Party struggled to build a two-party system, provide justice for the freedman, and unity to the nation. Despite their valiant efforts and modest successes, most historians view the Reconstruction as a failure (Foner, 1988).

The issue of Reconstruction policy dominated the presidential campaigns of 1868 and 1872, and the presidential election of 1876 resulted in ending Reconstruction. Reconstruction became symbolic of a failed attempt at reorganizing Southern society to ensure the full political equality of newly freed African Americans. The early successes of Reconstruction soon faded as the nation's attention turned away from civil rights for blacks to other pressing economic concerns (Foner, 1988).

Many Northern leaders themselves did not strongly favor full civil, political, and social rights for African Americans, and the compromise of 1877, which ended the federal role in civil rights enforcement, began a long period of increasing efforts to reassert white supremacy over all of Southern society (Foner, 1988).

Q3: Struggle for Control of Reconstruction

Radical Republicans scorned this “Ten Percent Plan” as far too lenient. Lincoln defended it as an important wartime measure by which ...