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In Chapter 15 of Inhuman Bondage, Davis discusses the ultimate events of the civil war and what they meant, and also what the entire war itself meant for the Union, the Confederacy, and the United Sates as a whole. He talks about how “the Civil War was an apocalyptic success in the sense that it brought an end to nearly a century of struggle and broken hopes regarding the ultimate extinction of African America Slavery” (Davis 299). As well as the success, the war also represented a major conflict in America; it showed the weakness and inefficiency of the American political and economic system. It showed that the nation had to go through war and hardship, causing many deaths of soldiers and civilians on both sides, in order to come to a resolution. After the war, the US had to reconstruct its economic system due to the freeing of all the slaves and necessity for more jobs and positions to be filled.
Obviously everything wasn’t completely fixed after the war; the southern slave owners deeply feared that their former slaves would retaliate viciously. The reconstruction of The United States depended on the North establishing compatibility with the South again to make decisions as one nation, especially those decisions regarding race issues.
As Emily mentions in her blog post, this war was the most devastating war in American history, yet its hard to think it wasn’t necessary. This is quite the staggering question; was a war this devastating necessary to force an end to slavery and the conflicts between the North and the South? Especially in such a young nation, growing and changing so rapidly that it was still finding its identity. In my opinion, that is the most devastating part of the war, that such a tragic war was necessary in the continuance of a young nation.
This reading was very interesting in that it covered the aspects of each side’s reactions to the war, and how that would affect the near and distant future of the nation. I liked the way Davis represented the importance of America’s reconstruction, and how, even after the war was over, it was still very crucial that the North and South come together as one nation again.