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Directions: Use the Document to determine if each change is a social or political change. 6 changes are social and 3 are political.
|
Social or Political? |
Change |
|
Slavery Ends |
|
|
New constitution ended slavery |
|
|
People suffered |
|
|
No white males to work & support farms |
|
|
Implemented social welfare programs to feed the poor |
|
|
Starvation |
|
|
No money for necessities |
|
|
Louisiana rejoins the Union |
|
|
Downturn in sugar and cotton industries |
Transcribed Image Text:Social and Political Changes During the Civil War
These troops (more than 24,000 African
American Louisianans) symbolized the most
dramatic of the changes Louisiana witnessed during
the war-the ending of slavery. In 1860, Louisiana
possessed 331,726 slaves, which were 46.8 percent
of the state's population (and 59 percent of the
population outside of New Orleans). Emancipation
came unevenly to the state. As soon as General
Butler arrived in New Orleans, runaway slaves,
known as -contrabands, I escaped to his lines.
Officially, Butler returned slaves belonging to loyal
slaveholders while allowing slaves of Confederate
owners to remain in New Orleans, yet in practice
this distinction was difficult to maintain. A similar divergence occurred when President Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which freed the slaves in rebel controlled areas but not those
within Union lines. In Louisiana, this meant that slaves in New Orleans and many of the sugarcane parishes did
not fall under its mandate. Nevertheless, the state's unionist 1864 Constitution ended this distinction by
| abolishing slavery in Louisiana a year before the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery throughout the United
States. During this whole process, the Union army helped supervise a transition from slave labor to free, wage
labor, a transition that remained incomplete at war's end.
The 1864 Constitution was emblematic of Louisiana's role as a test case for President Lincoln's
Reconstruction policies. As early as December 1862, the Union government held congressional elections in
New Orleans. Later, Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction called for a state's reentry in the
Union after a portion of the population equaling 10 percent of the votes cast in the 1860 presidential election
swore loyalty to the United States. This plan, dubbed the 10 Percent Plan, went into effect in Louisiana in 1864
and resulted in a new constitution, which ended slavery but did not allow African Americans to vote. In 1864,
Unionist voters selected Michael Hahn as governor, and when the legislature selected Hahn to be U.S. senator
in March 1865, Lt. Governor James Madison Wells succeeded him as ruler of the reconstructed portion of the
state.
The end of slavery was only one of the many striking changes to the home front in Louisiana. The
absence of military age white males, the disruption of the sugar and cotton trade, rampant inflation, lack of
credit, and the presence of an occupation army-and some Confederates as well-all contributed to
tremendous suffering for the civilian population. For many Louisianans, starvation was a real threat, as armies
either seized or destroyed food crops. Some planters, who possessed the means to move, fled to Texas, often
with their slaves. Other Louisianans struggled to feed, clothe, and house themselves. The Confederate state
government tried to help by allocating $5 million to soldiers' families and distributing food to those in need,
but this amount did not prove sufficient to alleviate all of the state's suffering, especially in areas that saw
repeated Union incursions. Confederate Governor Henry Watkins Allen, elected in 1863 to succeed Governor
Moore, gained lasting fame for his efforts to aid Louisiana's plain folk in the Confederate portion of Louisiana
during the final year of the war.
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