What changes did the Civil War bring to civilian society to both the North and t

Question: What changes did the Civil War bring to civilian society to both the North and the South!?
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Prior to the war, the economy of the South was that of an agricultural society contrasted to an increasingly industrialized society in the North!. The North was modernizing while powers in the South were satisfied with the status quo!. The economy grew, but it did not develop a substantial commercial and industrial sector like the North!. Southern agriculture was as labor intensive in 1860 as it had been in 1800!. Upward social mobility was impossible for half of the Southern labor force who lived in slavery!. Education in the South was weak and only about 50% of the population was literate!. The southern states valued tradition and stability more than change and progress!.

Slavery formed the foundation of the South's social order!. Plantation agriculture and slavery were the basic institutions of the Southern economy from the 1600s until the war!. After the war, the backbone of the Southern economy as it previously existed changed forever!. In the North, railroad construction and operations formed the leading edge of economic development for two decades after the war!. The steel industry in the North also boomed as a result of meeting the demands of the railroad!. However, railroads also became the focal point of labor unrest and industrial violence in the North in the years following the war!.

After the war, blacks in the South started to become more educated, then things became separate but unequal!. Therefore, the economic status of the freedmen at first improved dramatically but then settled into a pattern of exploitation and poverty!. The country went from a slave labor economy to a free labor economy which included equal political rights for the freed slaves!. When the Democrats regained control of the South you began to see a decline in the social and financial condition of blacks!. Labor strife and the economic depression from 1873-1878 distracted public attention away from concern with the plight of blacks!. Northern Republicans recieved most of their political support from business men and the middle class who were frightened of labor militancy and violence!. Many Republicans became sympathetic to the Southern whites who seemed to face similar threats of social disorder from lower-class blacks!. Racial and class identity between Northern and Southern middle-class whites began to drive a wedge into the Northern white and Southern black Republicans!. The economic depression plus revelations of new scandals in the Grant administration further weakened the Republican party and helped pave the way for retreat from Reconstruction, Democrat control of the South and Jim Crow laws!.Www@QuestionHome@Com