DIRECTION On April 9 1865 General Lee left surrendered to General Grant right at the town of Appomattox Court House Virginia north to the Confederate camp The Confederate general Robert E Lee realized he was outnumbered and without supplies Realizing he had no other option Lee ordered a truce flag to be waved Later that day Lee surrendered to Union general Ulysses S Grant It marked the end of the Civil War
After four long years the war had ended It left behind death and destruction MALICE TOWARD NONE on a massive scale President Abraham During President Lincoln's Second Inaugural Lincoln had formulated a plan to help Address on March 4 1865 he addressed the task of Reconstruction His plan was To finish reconstruct or rebuild the United States the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds to care for him who shall have borne the However on April 14 the president was battle and for the widow and his orphan He assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in continued explaining that he wished to achieve Ford's Theatre in Washington DC Vice these goals with malice toward none with charity for all President Andrew Johnson a Southerner and former slave owner who had no college education became the new president Without the sure leadership of President Lincoln many wondered how the North and South would reunify successfully after such a bitter and bloody battle Government officials sought a way for the rebellious states to peacefully rejoin the Union Southern plantation owners wondered what would become of their mighty farms now that slavery had been abolished Former slaves struggled to establish new free lives starting from nothing As the dust settled on the battlegrounds the mighty problem of putting the nation back together again loomed overhead It would take a major effort to repair the social political and physical effects of the Civil War How would the United States ever recover from the bloodiest war in American history
Slaves often worked in crews and spent their days picking cotton
CHAPTER 2 WAR In the early 1800s the United States was a growing prospering nation With the end of the American Revolutionary War 1775 1783 citizens turned their attention from fighting for independence to building a nation They focused on economic social and governmental progress The nation expanded in size and more immigrants arrived in search of opportunity In the South this progress centered on growing cotton Separating the cotton fibers from the seed was a labor intensive job In 1793 Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin a machine that made the process faster and easier Widespread use of the cotton gin in the early 1800s quickly turned cotton into a lucrative cash crop for the Southern states By the 1820s cotton plantations had spread from Georgia to Texas
