Free Essay On History - The Aftershock of Civil War

The Aftershock of Civil War

After the civil war was over, there was much to be said of its aftershock. Justice was served but many disagreed and fought back with bloodshed, violence and political involvement. Many ex-confederates were angry and did not want to give in to the new civil reform. After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the second civil war was in full effect. Many southern plantation owners were not willing to give up the low cost of farming with the freedom of slaves and resorted to terror. They continued to fight for the blacks to not have the right to vote.
Many Southern states had to deal with contradiction and most were in battles to keep African Americans enslaved with no right to vote or the contrary. Louisiana’s New Orleans Massacre in 1866 was a historical event that sent havoc to the streets of New Orleans. Rebels sabotaged the meeting on the right to vote for blacks. Tennessee faced the same issue but had a strong Republican leader, William Gannaway Brownlow, that strongly enforced the path to their rights to vote and he worked towards ratifying the 14th Amendment to make this happen. Six young rebels met and formed the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in Tennessee and fought against the regime of Brownlow and what was happening politically in Tennessee. The KKK’s late night acts of terror had people fearing for their lives. They also planned to disrupt the elections with their white supremacy acts of violence. “It is not safe for me to go alone unarmed into the up country here, negros are daily shot dead, I fear that thousands of voters will be kept away or driven from the polls” [galvanizing election campaign] in [Tennessee] (47:10).
Georgia, Texas and other states had to deal with these same issues. Politicians and citizens standing up for equal rights and others who did not agree with this. In all this controversy there was an obscene amount of battle, death and bloodshed which defines the Civil War’s aftershock.

Works Cited

Aftershock: Beyond the Civil War – Full Documentary. Dir. David Padrusch. History Channel,
2006. Online.