Changes+in+the+South9

=__Changes in the South__=

The Reconstruction era was the period after the American Civil War. During this time, the South was in political, social and economic trouble. The South wanted the political reconstruction to help the economic well-being of the country and their own economic life. After the war all slaves were freed and had to find jobs( more jobs were in demand). One of the first attempts to establish order in the south was the making of the Bereau of Refugees. It was created on March 3, 1865, just one month before the official end of the civil war.

The government had to be fixed. No more sectionalism in the government. To restore the government and make it better they had to change the political differences. To start off with changes they provided blacks with citizenship and guarentees that federal and state laws should be applied equaly to black and white citizens, this was part of the 14th amendment. Around 1870 the 15th amendment was aproved. It stated that black males had the right to vote.

" After 1860 the number of people in the county increased very slowly (except for the decade between 1870 and 1880), and after 1920 the total number actually declined. Very few immigrants entered the county, so that by 1930 the number of foreign-born (which had been 2,454 in 1860) was only 322 out of a total population of 16,197. All of them, except 14, came from northern and eastern European countries.   TABLE VII: POPULATION STATISTICS, 1870-1940'
 * Year || Total || Colored || Foreign-Born ||
 * 1870 || 11,576 || 7 || 1,656 ||
 * 1880 || 14,487 || 6 || 1,750 ||
 * 1890 || 14,391 || 1 || 1,572 ||
 * 1900 || 15,938 || 4 || 1,284 ||
 * 1910 || 17,368 || 4 || 866 ||
 * 1920 || 17,896 || || 600 ||
 * 1930 || 16,197 || || 322 ||
 * 1940 || 16,425 || || Not yet available ||

"The changes in the centers of population in the county after the Civil War also were not very great. Beardstown, which was incorporated as a city in 1849, easily continued holding the lead which it possessed from the very beginning over the other towns in the county. Virginia was not incorporated as a city until 1873; and town governments were established in Chandlerville, Arenzville, and Ashland in the 1850's and 1860's. Several villages which had existed in ante-bellum days, like Monroe, Princeton, and Lancaster were forced out of existence mainly because they did not possess railroad connections; white Philadelphia which was laid out and platted in the 1830's declined in favor of Virginia in the 60's." http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ilcass/Cassinventory/civilwareconomic.htm

"Solid south"__** refers to electoral support from the South for the Democratic Party. __**Tenant Farming**__: A system of agricultural production when a landowner lets a tenant use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land. __**Sharecropping**__- to farm as a sharecropper
 * __Vocab
 * __Scalawag__** was a name for southern whites who supported the reconstruction of the Civil war.
 * __Carpetbagger__** was the names for people who moved to the south from the north durring the reconstruction era.