Blog #1: Reconstruction

Reconstruction in America refers to the time period in the United States post Civil-War. It is the era in which the nation called for drastic change, hence the  name "Reconstruction". Discussed in class, there were 5 major categories that described and illustrated the effects of Reconstruction; Politics, Economics, Culture, Geography, and Demography. Both the North and the South experienced different results in each category and I will discuss the differences below.

Politically, Reconstruction brought about great change in the North. However in my opinion, nothing changed in the South. That portion of the country remained just as racially tyrannical and pro-white as it had been before the end of slavery. The Election of 1877 signifies this perfectly. In 1877,  republican President Rutherford B. Hayes was elected to the presidential seat after a "back room deal" (discussed in lecture) was made between the Republicans and Democrats. Republicans agreed to allow the South to continue their "traditions" if the Republicans could just have the presidency. Once agreed upon, Hayes was elected, the troops that Andrew Johnson had placed in the South were pulled out, and slavery was continued under a new name, sharecropping and Jim Crow Laws. As a proud African American, this quite frankly pisses me off to know that the people I am supposed to trust with my liberties and freedoms would allow such hyaenas crimes to occur under the law of the United States government. Nevertheless, this is a professional blog and I will speak only facts. 

Economically, the North and South were dramatically different. The readings in American Horizon exemplify the discrepancies between the two regionsStarting with the north, the economy was simply booming. Cities such as New York and Chicago were becoming centers of business, trade, and commerce. This is a time in the North known as Industrialization. The way of earning money was shifted from farming and agriculture to factories and buildings. More people migrated and immigrated from various parts of the world to join the North on their skyrocket upwards. However, the south continued their farming ways of life with the good old help of their black workers. Sharecropping became the new way to enslave African Americans around the laws of the Emancipation Proclamation put in place by Andrew Lincoln. Some African Americans could not live off the wages of sharecropping which put them in even deeper debt, so they decided to take there chances at their own farming and business in the South. Most of these cases ended in failure, however it was better than being enslaved. This being the case, the south did not excel in the way that the north did; the south needed labor of which was in very short supply. 

Culture in the north illustrated a very drastic change in the history if that region of the country. Susan Lewis's Talking History Interview titled "Albany Businesswomen" is a perfect indicator of this culture shock occurring in the north. Women began taking on a more major role that that of just a housewife who took care of the children. There are multiple cases of successful, business-growing women in the Albany area. For example, Julia Ridgeway was a plumbing entrepreneur in the mid 1800's who was described to have had "exceptional drive and vision". She was a widow who started the company NYS Plumbing Establishment, hiring men to do the manual labor while she ran the company. In the year 1865, it was measured that she accumulated some of the most money of all proprietors in Albany with a whopping revenue of $10,000. She began investing in real estate and even extended her company nationwide. This was something unprecedented by an American woman, or any woman in the world for that matter. Another woman, a piano seller by the name of Jacobina Teets was said at one point to be "doing just as well as any other piano seller. The moral of Lewis's study was to just further illustrate the fact that culture in America was changing.

Schaller, Michael. American Horizons: U.S. History in a Global Context. Vol. 2. New York: Oxford UP, 2013. Print.

Susan, Lewis. Talking History: Albany’s Businesswomen. 

Albany.edu. 3 April http://www.albany.edu/talkinghistory/arch2003jan-june.html