Post Civil War Analysis

After a nation went to war against itself and the North won, there were many issues that needed to be resolved. The civil war was fought against the Confederacy of the Southern states and the Union, Northern states over the future of slavery. After the war was over, there was a rift in the lives of many freed slaves in the southern states that lead to many conflicts. During the same decade, many of the Western states were dealing with similar issues on how to deal with the Native Americans, as the nation expanded westward. In response to the conflicts that ensued both were dealt with in different ways but the underlying racial themes remained.
In the South, post-civil war, there were around 4 million slaves freed. This meant that the South
With the Homestead Act and the Transatlantic Railroad being build, the lands to the West were contested and many conflicts ensued. There were many massacres as the Native American’s were being driven off their lands. Many ending up in Indian reservations, as some of the tribes didn’t want the conflicts to continue. The Native American’s were fighting for their freedom just as the slaves were in the South. To ease the tensions, the Dawes Severalty Act was passed by Congress in 1887. This act “divided tribal lands and awarded 160 acres to each family heads” (Aboukhadijeh, 2012) and ultimately took the tribes ownership of their ancestral lands at the cost of not being at war with the white settlers.
Looking back at both regional conflicts, there are many issues that both the freed slaves and Native Americans were dealing with. Both were fighting against the “whites” and their in-place systems that didn’t account for other races. Both were treated unfairly and didn’t see changes to their ways of life, until decades after new laws were being enforced. The slaves were fighting for their civil liberties as the Native American’s were fighting for their