Description
By Walter Lynwood Fleming (1919)
When the armies of the Union and of the Confederacy were disbanded in 1865, there were still many problems that pressed for solution. The surviving Confederate soldiers came straggling back to their devastated homes. Everywhere they saw widows and orphans. They found property destroyed, the labor system disorganized, and the inhabitants suffering from want. They found the White people demoralized and the Blacks free, bewildered and disorderly. Organized government had lapsed with the surrender of the Confederate armies. Beneath a disorganized society lay a devastated land. The accumulated capital of the South had disappeared in worthless Confederate stocks, bonds and currency. The banks had failed. Two billion dollars invested in slaves was wiped out. Factories had been destroyed by Federal raiders or seized, sold or dismantled because they had furnished supplies to the Confederacy. Mining industries were paralyzed. It was months before courthouses, state capitols, and school buildings were again made available for normal use. How could all of this devastation be undone? Reprint. Softcover, 322 pages, #989
