Unlike the North, the South faced a period of "reconstruction", which lasted some twelve years after the war ended. Unlike their Yankee counterpart, the Southerner went home to an entirely different world than the one he had left when joining the war. Not only was the home, which had been his childhood memory and comfort, often destroyed; the entire world he had known had been altered forever. For four years, the South had been in various stages of financial as well as material ruin. Crops had gone unplanted, destroyed, livestock confiscated and contributed, the economic power of the South lay as deeply burned as the cities, which had been laid to charcoaled ruins.

There are family stories of this period which followed The War.

In order to fully understand the stories, we must first understand the times in which our grandparents, our great grandparents lived. For half a generation, the South existed in a state of military and political occupation. We cannot understand the sentiments of the South, the people of the South without fully understanding this period of American history.

The War had enlisted an army of a little over 700,000 men into the Confederacy who had fought over 2,200 battles. The wWar had been fought over nearly every foot of her territory. She had lost an entire generation of young men with the death of 325,000 men from war casualties, not including those who had been maimed, disabled and ruined in health. It may be moderately estimated that some 20% of the white producers were killed or disabled by the War. (The South After the War ed. Gen.Clement A. Evans) There was scarecely a home which had not lost one or two in the War.

The War left many cities in ashes and tracts of land laid to waste. The people were impoverished. No money was in circulation, no credit system existed and most of the commercial entities were suspended or inoperative. Provisions were scarce. The paroled soldiers returned home to desolation, disheartened and humiliated by failure. Their only asset was their heart and their courage and their determination.

Once home, they found 4 million emancipated slaves, each seeking the same employment and means of survival as the returning soldiers. Many of the newly emancipated slaves felt that the Federal government had freed them from labor of any kind and was obligated to provide for them.

Private debt incurred before the war went unpaid after the war and the property on which this debt had been made no longer existed. Railroads and means of travel and communication had been destroyed. All factories and industries had been destroyed.

Adding to the confusion, adventurers, eager to capitalize upon the South's disasters, flooded into the Southern states. In many parts of the South, property was confiscated and claimed as abandoned by the Freedman's Bureau.

A feeling of gloom permeated the South. "We have given up the right of a people to secede from the Union; we have given up the right of each State to judge for itself of the infraction of the Constitution and the mode of redress; we have given up the right to frame our own domestic institutions. We fought for all these and we lost in that controversy."

The assessed value of property in the South fell nearly half between 1860 and 1870. The total loss to the South has been estimated at five billion dollars during the period of the War.

Following the War, the states of VA, GA, NC, SC, MS, TX and FL were given governments based upon their State constitutions in 1861. TN, AR, and LA were under bogus governments which had been organized and sustained by the military forces of teh United States. MD, MO and KY, which had not seceded were quickly subdued and controlled by troops of the United States and because those states had many Southern sympathizers, were held under strict surveillance during the War during which time, martial law was in effect in those states.

As the War waned, every town, village and district was occupied rapidly by the Union troops and all civil government was ignored. The governors of the States attempted to call their legislatures together to conform to the results of the War and take steps for their restoration to the Union. They did this believing that the American principle of governement, the sovereignty and indestructibility of the States, would be respected. They also believed that it was absolutely necessary to preserve civil government and to show submission to the results of the War.

In Georgia, the United States, through General Wilson of the US Army in GA, the legislature was ordered: "Neither the legislature nor any other political body will be permitted to assemble under the call of the rebel State authorities." This order was carried out in all the seceded States. The exisiting civil government was ignored and everywhere a military rule was inaugurated in municipal and local communities. In effect, the South was disenfranchised.

Amnesty was offered to all save for all military officers above the rank of colonel, naval officers above the rank of lieutenant, governors, judges of courts, West Point officers, all civil officers of the Confederate government and all citizens worth over $20,000. This exclusion included some 120,000 men in the South. The excluded persons were required to take an Oath of Pardon swearing their allegiance to the Constitution and to all laws passed by the United States during the time in which the South was a part of the Confederacy.

Following the War, we see a great shift in population as many of the Southern soldiers sought new lives further West. In our family we see that movement West in the families of:

Leonard H. Patterson (Alabama to Texas)
Byron Franklin Bogardus (Illinois to Washington and then California)