Results of the American Civil War: An Examination of Key Issues Immediately Following the Conflict

The issue of post-Civil War conditions has many intricacies and matters to consider but, in the end, one can state with absolute certainty that the North won the war. With that being said, though, it is important to recognize that the South's general ideology, sans slavery, reigned powerfully for a century after. Let us examine the military results of the war, racial dynamics, the Compromise of 1877, sharecropping, voting rights, and segregation.

Clearly, the secessions that southern states took to preserve slavery and white supremacy came at a dear cost to the South. While the secessionist movement enjoyed rapid momentum during 1860 and resulted in the formation of the Confederacy in 1861, the South would soon found itself reeling from the military might that Unionists, with President Abraham Lincoln as commander-in-chief, ultimately mounted. There are a number of reasons that the Union was eventually won the Civil War. Principally, one cannot possibly overstate just how imperative President Lincoln's strong leadership was to preserving the Union. Early on during the war, Lincoln firmly conveyed to people on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line that he intended to keep the Union whole and, making a bold step, his Emancipation Proclamation provided an ultimatum for the South and real hope of abolition for enslaved blacks.