The United States to 1876

The Ravages of Defeat

A weary soldier sits in dismay amid the rubble of a once thriving plantation in the spring of 1865.  His mind wonders to a time when things were different; when this plantation was a center of activity and prosperity.  The house, now in ashes, shows signs of one-time grandeur.  The foundation, which remains, gives credence to the fact that it was sizable, and grand.  The fields, now a battleground, were once thriving producers of cotton, rice and indigo.  The only remaining structures on this plantation are the slave quarters, a fitting legacy to a forgotten populace and a “peculiar” institution.  Now destitution and solitude are the only remembrances of this once productive area.  The land seems almost weary of its inhabitants.

You are a Union soldier sitting amid a ruined plantation in Virginia.  Although excited at the prospect of victory, your mind cannot escape the ravages of what has happed to the South and its culture.  Although you personally found slavery despicable, you are saddened by the nature of this war and its destructive effect on a region of the United States?  Do you believe the South brought this on itself? Did this region have the right to leave the union and create their own nation?  Why or why not?  Do you believe the south capable or restructuring its capabilities and finding a new medium of survival?  Now that the war is almost over, what steps do you think the Federal Government should do to rebuild and encourage new thinking in the South?  Elaborate.

4-5 pages typed, double spaced

12 point font

100 points