Reconstruction

1
Reconstruction

• The North
• Unparalleled Prosperity

2
Economic

• Wartime inflation
• High prices
• Profits boomed
• Government awards encouraged speculators
• Put money in the hands of those who would invest
• From merchant cash box to factory accounting
  office

3

• War-related industries
• Food processing/meat packing
• Steel (iron and coal)
• Textiles (wool uniforms and blankets)
• Railroads and ships (transport troops)
• Armaments (guns and ammunition)
• Banks (coordinate and manage money)
• Communication (1866 Western Union becomes the
  countrys first monopoly)
• Fuel and lamp oil

4

• New powerful, wealthy industrial class
• Railroads and shipping
• Thomas A. Scott (Pennsylvania Railroad/6,000
  miles of track/surpassed only by Britain and
  France)
• Collis Huntington
• James J. Hill
• Jay Gould
• Banks
• J.P. Morgan
• Meat packing
• Philip Armour
• Petroleum
• John D. Rockefeller
• Gunpowder
• Henry DuPont

5

• Between 1865 and 1873, industrial production
  increased 75 percent.

6

• Labor
• Unrest
• 7 states adopted an 8-hr. day but never enforced
  it
• There were hundreds of unsuccessful riots,
  strikes, walkout, work stoppages, etc.
• Great Railroad Strike of 1877 against the
  Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first
  successful strike in the nations history
• Benefits
• War created a labor shortage so workers were in
  demand
• Increased production meant lower prices
• Real earnings rose 40 HOWEVER, an unskilled
  factory laborer made only 600 per year which was
  less than a living wage

7
Social

• New white-collar professional workers
• Wage-earner class
• Gap between rich and poor widened
• 1868Matthew Smith publishes Sunshine and Shadows
  in New York about the gap between the 2 million
  mansions and the tenements/slums

8

• City and State programs for social reform
• Public Health and hospitals
• 1867NY establishes a Board of Health
• Increased education
• 186567 NY opens 8 new teacher-training colleges
• Welfare programs
• Public works programs
• Culinary water systems
• Sewer systems
• Fire and Police Departments
• 1867NY establishes Fire Department

9

• Blacks
• Greater equality under the law
• 1867Philadelphia integrates streetcars
• Education
• Schools are integrated
• Black teachers are trained and hired
• BUT
• Only 2 of the total population so no power
• Trapped in urban poverty
• Menial, unskilled jobs
• 1871NY
• 400 waiters
• 500 longshoremen
• 2 physicians
• Handful of artisans
• Faced racial prejudiceequality under the law but
  not viewed as mental or social equals

10

• Women
• Involved in state and local reforms
• 200,000 women were involved in aid going to the
  South
• U.S. Sanitary Commission
• Clothing, food, and supplies to Union soldiers
• Freedmans Aid Society
• Money, supplies, books, teachers to schools in
  the South
• 1000 teachers who taught 300,000 students
• Clothing and food for freed slaves

11
Political

• Sale of government bonds allowed people to own a
  share of the nations debt
• Congressional policies encouraged national
  economic activism
• Corruption
• LocalTweed Ring (William Marcy Tweed/Tammany
  Hall) in New York
• StateButlerism (Benjamin F. Butler) in
  Massachusetts
• Influence peddler8-hr. day, women vote,
  greenbacks, etc.
• FederalU.S. Grant administration

12

• The world needs to be shown that the American
  government can confidently command the support
  of its citizens, and make the duty of the
  individual to the state a debt to be collected.
• --Chicago Tribune

13
Reconstruction in the North creates the beginning
of the modern American state.