At the end of the Civil War, the South was a
devastated land. Travelers to the region were shocked by what they saw. Wherever General Sherman’s
army had marched in Georgia and South Carolina, wrote one traveler, the countryside “looked for many miles like a broad black streak of ruin.”
In other words, so much had been burned. In Tennessee, one visitor stated, “The trail of war is visible . . . in burnt-up (cotton) gin houses, ruined bridges, mills, and factories.” And in Virginia, wrote yet another, “The barns are all burned, chimneys standing without houses and houses standing without roofs, or doors or windows.”
Fields that once produced fine harvests of cotton, tobacco, and grain were covered with weeds. Small farms were destroyed. Nearly half the South’s farm animals were gone. Railroad tracks were torn up. Whatever factories the South had before the war were now mostly destroyed. Many Southerners, both white and African American, were without food, clothing, or any way to make a living.
The human losses were even worse. Close to one-third of the men and boys who put on the gray uniform of the Confederacy had died during the war. Even more were wounded, some so badly they would never be the same again. In 1866, the year after the war ended, the state of Mississippi spent one out of every five tax dollars it collected to buy artificial arms and legs for its veterans.
As for the former slaves, the war brought them freedom. In the first months after the war, a good many African Americans left their old plantations just so they could experience their newfound freedom. They wanted to know what it was like to go wherever they wanted without having to get permission from an owner. One former slave told her former owner that she just could
not stay and continue to cook for her. “If I stay here,” she said, “I’ll never know I am free.”
