Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the new edition
- Acknowledgments
- A note to the reader
- Chapter 1 What did freedom mean?
- Chapter 2 The legacy of slavery
- Chapter 3 The myth of the prostrate South
- Chapter 4 The demise of the plantation
- Chapter 5 Agricultural reconstruction
- Chapter 6 Financial reconstruction
- Chapter 7 The emergence of the merchants' territorial monopoly
- Chapter 8 The trap of debt peonage
- Chapter 9 The roots of southern poverty
- STATISTICAL APPENDIXES
- DATA APPENDIX
- Epilogue
- A Bibliography of Literature on the South after 1977
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 3 - The myth of the prostrate South
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the new edition
- Acknowledgments
- A note to the reader
- Chapter 1 What did freedom mean?
- Chapter 2 The legacy of slavery
- Chapter 3 The myth of the prostrate South
- Chapter 4 The demise of the plantation
- Chapter 5 Agricultural reconstruction
- Chapter 6 Financial reconstruction
- Chapter 7 The emergence of the merchants' territorial monopoly
- Chapter 8 The trap of debt peonage
- Chapter 9 The roots of southern poverty
- STATISTICAL APPENDIXES
- DATA APPENDIX
- Epilogue
- A Bibliography of Literature on the South after 1977
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Even the most sanguine are astonished at the zeal and energy displayed by our people in reconstructing their private fortunes. Our railroads have been repaired, commercial intercourse with the world reopened, cities and villages which were but a few months since masses of charred ruins rebuilt as if by magic, and our planting interest, though less prosperous than heretofore, owing to the change of labor and unpropitious seasons, has not been less active. We have every reason to hope that this is but the beginning, the ground swell of a great and glorious future, if fortune will continue to favor us.
John T. Burns, Comptroller General, State of Georgia, Annual Report of the Comptroller General of the State of Georgia … October 16, 1866 (Macon: J. W. Burke & Co., 1866), p. 28.The American Civil War devastated the South; the loss of human life, work animals, and other livestock was enormous; the destruction of houses, barns, fences, bridges, railroads, and levees paralyzed agriculture; the burning of cities, factories, warehouses, and wharves crippled the southern economy. The well-known stories of Sherman's march to the sea; the burning of Richmond, Atlanta, Columbia, and Charleston; the raids into northern Alabama; and other, less dramatic, incidents add to the popular image of widespread destruction. Every account of the Reconstruction Period comments on this devastation, and a number of historians and economists have asserted that the loss of southern capital from the war severely affected the economic recovery of the South.
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- One Kind of FreedomThe Economic Consequences of Emancipation, pp. 40 - 55Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001