Civil War Social Changes

The Civil War had been building for an extremely long time and the violent tensions had only grown from the conflict in Bleeding Kansas and the assault on Charles Sumner one of America’s bloodiest wars. The strain between the North and South flourished over the issues of slavery, state rights, and the overall Southern need of independence. Various constitutional and social changes heavily amounted to revolution in America through changes to politics, race, and the economy. In 1860 Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected as the 16th American president, sparking the secession of South Carolina. Following South Carolina’s secession from the United States, several other southern states withdrew. The seceded southern states, then constructed the Confederate States of America, headed by Jefferson Davis, in response to “the Union’s oppressive rule”.
One group took the violence against African-Americans to the extreme, the Ku Klux Klan founded in 1865 and strove to use terror tactics to intimidate African-Americans into submission. Though the Enforcement or Ku Klux Klan Acts were enacted by the government to return force against the Klan, the damage was done socially the segregation and fear grew between the races. Once the Civil War and the Reconstruction period came to the end the resulting society and governmental system was vastly different. Slavery was over, these slaves now held rights , citizenship, and now beginning to be integrated into American society. A centuries old institution has been overthrown and society as a whole has been permanently changed, so it would been evident that this period in time has resulted in a forever altering revolution which will shape American society. One changing aspect of American society was the Civil Rights Movement which strove to end the wrongful segregation of whites and