Editing Reconstruction era (section)

=== Economic devastation ===
The Civil War had a devastating economic and material impact on the South, where most combat occurred.

The enormous cost of the Confederate war effort took a high toll on the region's economic infrastructure. The direct costs in [[human capital]], government expenditures, and physical destruction totaled $3.3&nbsp;billion. By early 1865, the [[Confederate dollar]] had nearly zero value, and the Southern banking system was in collapse by the war's end. Where scarce Union dollars could not be obtained, residents resorted to a [[barter]] system.<ref name=":2" />

The Confederate States in 1861 had 297 towns and cities, with a total population of 835,000 people; of these, 162, with 681,000 people, were at some point occupied by Union forces. Eleven cities were destroyed or severely damaged by military action, including Atlanta, Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond, though the rate of damage in smaller towns was much lower.<ref name="Paskoff">{{Cite journal |last=Paskoff |first=Paul F. |date=2008 |title=Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy |journal=[[Civil War History]] |volume=54 |issue=1 |pages=35–62 |doi=10.1353/cwh.2008.0007}}</ref> Farms were in disrepair, and the [[Antebellum South|prewar]] stock of horses, mules, and cattle was much depleted. Forty percent of Southern livestock had been killed.{{sfnp|McPherson|1992|p=38}} The South's farms were not highly mechanized, but the value of farm implements and machinery according to the [[1860 United States census|1860 Census]] was $81 million and was reduced by 40% by 1870.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hesseltine |first=William B. |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofthesout027909mbp/ |title=A History of the South, 1607–1936 |publisher=Prentice-Hall |year=1936 |location=New York |pages=573–574 |oclc=477679 |author-link=William B. Hesseltine |via=Archive.org}}</ref> The [[transportation]] [[infrastructure]] lay in ruins, with little railroad or [[riverboat]] service available to move crops and animals to market.<ref>Ezell, John Samuel. 1963. ''The South Since 1865''. pp. 27–28.</ref> Railroad mileage was located mostly in rural areas; over two-thirds of the South's rails, bridges, rail yards, repair shops, and rolling stock were in areas reached by Union armies, which systematically destroyed what they could. Even in untouched areas, the lack of maintenance and repair, the absence of new equipment, the heavy over-use, and the deliberate relocation of equipment by the Confederates from remote areas to the war zone ensured the system would be ruined at war's end.<ref name="Paskoff" /> Restoring the infrastructure—especially the railroad system—became a high priority for Reconstruction state governments.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Lash |first=Jeffrey N. |date=1993 |title=Civil War Irony: Confederate Commanders and the Destruction of Southern Railways |journal=Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives |volume=25 |issue=1 |pages=35–47}}</ref>

Over a quarter of Southern White men of military age—the backbone of the White workforce—died during the war, leaving their families destitute,{{sfnp|McPherson|1992|p=38}} and per capita income for White Southerners declined from $125 in 1857 to a low of $80 in 1879. By the end of the 19th century and well into the 20th century, the South was locked into a system of poverty. How much of this failure was caused by the war and by previous reliance on slavery remains the subject of debate among economists and historians.<ref>{{cite web |last=Ransom |first=Roger L. |date=February 1, 2010 |title=The Economics of the Civil War |url=http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/ransom.civil.war.us |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111213062917/http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/ransom.civil.war.us |archive-date=December 13, 2011 |access-date=March 7, 2010 |website=Economic History Services}} Direct costs for the Confederacy are based on the value of the dollar in 1860.</ref> In both the North and South, modernization and industrialization were the focus of the post-war recovery, built on the growth of cities, railroads, factories, and banks and led by Radical Republicans and former Whigs.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Alexander |first=Thomas B. |date=August 1961 |title=Persistent Whiggery in the Confederate South, 1860–1877 |journal=[[Journal of Southern History]] |volume=27 |issue=3 |pages=305–329 |doi=10.2307/2205211 |jstor=2205211}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Trelease |first=Allen W. |date=August 1976 |title=Republican Reconstruction in North Carolina: A Roll-call Analysis of the State House of Representatives, 1866–1870 |journal=[[Journal of Southern History]] |volume=42 |issue=3 |pages=319–344 |doi=10.2307/2207155 |jstor=2207155}}</ref>
[[File:Wealth, per capita, in the United States, from 9th US Census (1872).jpg|left|thumb|The distribution of wealth per capita in 1872, illustrating the disparity between North and South in that period]]