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Edited on Wed Feb-06-08 08:29 PM by unc70
How much wealth does it take to influence politics? Not very much when all were relatively poor. If you are allowed to vote or hold office. Sometimes the disenfranchised were white, more often black, and always native American.
Do you have any first-hand experience living in the South? Yes, a very few people achieved great wealth in the South in the 50 years following the Civil War. The overwhelming majority of the "better off" in the South were still land-poor where one bad harvest, criminal manipulation of commodity prices by Northern markets, or the latest bank "panic" or depression might suddenly leave landowners unable to pay even their taxes, with land in the family for 200 years suddenly sold on the courthouse steps.
My state of NC was never as wealthy as some of its neighbors, was the last to leave the Union, and suffered the greatest losses. NC only left the Union after it was ordered by Lincoln to provide two regiments as part of a force of 75,000 to put down the rebellion in States further South. NC refused and viewed the levying of troops as a violation of the US Constitution.
Before the tragic war ended, nearly every non-slave male under 60 served in the military (white, freed black, Indian) in some way. Slightly over 125,000 men total, almost exactly the census of non-slave males in 1860 would fight to protect their State. Over 40,000 of them would perish: killed in action, succumbing to their wounds, or more-likely from the epidemics that ravaged the armies, North and South. One third of all the NC troops, one third of all non-slave men, dead in four years. At least another third were wounded, so many had limbs amputated that the cost of artificial limbs accounted for nearly 20% of state budgets over the next 8-10 years!
Things were little better for the women and children left behind or for the slaves either before or after emancipation. The Union armies, particularly under Sherman, destroyed nearly everything they encountered, seizing livestock and any foodstocks they found, burning homes and buildings and crops in the fields, looting valuables of any type including farm implements and tools, often committing attrocities against all they encountered: white, black, and particularly Indian. Diseases ran rampant through the entire population. The destruction was so great that freed slaves who had first followed the Union armies in celebration were too soon following in desparation and starvation.
In 1860, North Carolina had about 85,000 farmers and only 121 planters (holders of 1000+ acres). Over 70% of NC farms were less than 100 acres. In 1860, the slave population was just over 300,000 which was roughly one-third the total population. Few of the former slaves possessed much more than the clothes they were wearing. Many of their former owners and the overwhelming majority who had never owned slaves were not in much better shape, except they probably still owned the land -- if they could hold on to it. Because the rights of the returning CSA veterans were initially stripped from them for several years (not just their right to vote or hold office, but also things like serve on juries or be appointed by the courts to administer the estate of a deceased relative or to serve as the guardian of surviving minor children. Remember women at this time were restricted in how they could own or convey properties separate from their spouses (state law nearly everywhere).
So you return home after the war to find your brother's widow and/or children, the family farm, and all their finances under the control of a court-appointed guardian, possibly even a complete stranger. If this were an undivided family farm, this "guardian" could petition the court for "equitable distribution" of the property for the benefit of his wards and other heirs. While the court might force the property to be subdivided among the heirs, most often the property would be auctioned on the courthouse steps to the highest bidder for cash within 30 days. Rarely were the original owners able to purchase their own property because what little wealth they might have had was now worthless Confederate money or was under the control of those forcing the sale. The properties would sell for almost nothing and that portion for the minor heirs might be quickly consumed to pay their guardian for their "upkeep and expenses". The extended family would be left destitute, without the house, the farm, the livelihood of generations, and their place in the community.
One way to avoid this predation was for the single and widowed men to marry the widows of their brothers and other family. This was fairly common practice before the war, but widespread immediately afterward. Other forces encouraged this behavior including early death of either spouse from disease or childbirth, the small mostly-rural population, the limited population mobility due to poor transportation, and the highly inter-married extended families. Only about 3,000 men and 3,000 women came of age each year across the entire state (over 600 miles). Roughly 30 couples in each of the current 100 counties. Avoid close relatives.
Other responses seizures of land and other perceived injustices were more violent. Vigilantes, the KKK, violence of all types. For about 10 years, the South fell into near-tribal chaos, much like what we now see in Iraq. Occupying army, carpetbaggers, mercenaries, senseless violence, de-Baathification, clueless outsiders, nearly everyone suffering. After 25 more years, we began seeing Jim Crow. So the Civil War, Reconstruction, and reaction thereto is slowly coming to an end after only 100 years.
Slowly, through many individual actions, efforts, kindness, compassion, and cruelty the peoples of the South found ways to survive, slowly rebuild their families and their communities. Former slaves and indentures sometimes were forced to become sharecroppers for the land-owners who were labor starved, others acquired small farms on land where they and their ancestors had been slaves, possibly in return for helping farm the larger remaining property.
For over 100 years, the South had little remaining except the land; the families; the churches; the close communities that usually crossed racial divides; the poverty; the shared suffering, loss, deprivation; the well tended cemetaries; and the rich oral tradition so that no one should ever forget all those and all that was squandered.
The North also lost. In 1860, the South provided over 80% of all the revenue of the US Government, mostly on import/export levies. One of the South's grievances leading up to the War had been the North continuing to raise taxes to provide services to the North's rapidly growing population and fledgling industries. Every party, North and South, public and private, was now broke.
So did a few acquire great wealth. A couple in NC did: Duke and Reynolds with tobacco; a few from the North in textiles; one or two through marriage to Norther industrialists.
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