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Civil War Dbq

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The period following the Civil War was a period of profound change in the South and the North following the end of slavery. For former slaves were in a difficult position following the war they had received their freedom, but not much else. For the freedmen there was a brief belief that freedom would grant them everything that they needed to succeed. They wanted an equality of rights with whites. Frederick Douglass said that “Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot” (Foner 89). African-Americans wanted these rights to guarantee their status as citizens who would not be dominated by their former Confederate neighbors. Former slaves as also wanted land to work on under their own terms. “To the former slaves, the war with …show more content…

For Northerners the hope was that the idea of free labor would transform the South into a land of opportunity for all. Freemen working for their own wages would be able to gain their own economic and societal well-being. “ In the North, ostensibly, any hardworking individual could rise from the dependence of wage labor to economic autonomy”(Foner 98). The North was also divided on what to do with the South the after the war. Leaders like Senator Thaddeus Stevens argued for confiscation of land and punishing the planter class that had brought about the war He said “The duty of the government, was to punish the rebel belligerents, and so weaken their hands that they may never again endanger the union” (Masur 81). He was opposed by others like Senator John Sherman he stated “if we exclude from voting the rebels of the South, who compose nearly all of the former voting population, what becomes of the republican doctrine that all government must be founded on the consent of the governed”? (Congressional Globe, 39 Cong. 2 Sess. Vol. 37, pt. 3, p.1564) The Republicans of the North also wanted to expand their party into the South following the

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