Editing Reconstruction era (section)

==Social and economic factors==

===Religion===
[[File:Eastman Johnson, The Lord is My Shepherd.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Eastman Johnson]]'s 1863 painting ''[[The Lord Is My Shepherd (Eastman Johnson)|The Lord is My Shepherd]]'', of a man reading the Bible]]
Freedmen were very active in forming their own churches, mostly Baptist or Methodist, and giving their ministers both moral and political leadership roles. In a process of self-segregation, practically all Blacks left White churches so that few racially integrated congregations remained (apart from some Catholic churches in Louisiana). They started many new Black Baptist churches and soon, new Black state associations.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

Four main groups competed with each other across the South to form new Methodist churches composed of freedmen. They were the [[African Methodist Episcopal Church]]; the [[African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church]], both independent Black denominations founded in Philadelphia and New York, respectively; the [[Christian Methodist Episcopal Church|Colored Methodist Episcopal Church]] (which was sponsored by the White [[Methodist Episcopal Church, South]]) and the well-funded [[Methodist Episcopal Church]] (predominantly White Methodists of the North). The [[History of Methodism in the United States#Civil War and Reconstruction|Methodist Church]] had split before the war due to disagreements about slavery.{{sfnp|Stowell|1998|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=jQphbo640wAC&pg=PA84 83–84]}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Walker |first=Clarence Earl |title=A Rock in a Weary Land: The African Methodist Episcopal Church During the Civil War and Reconstruction |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=1982 |isbn=9780807108833 |location=Baton Rouge}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}} By 1871, the Northern Methodists had 88,000 Black members in the South, and had opened numerous schools for them.{{sfnp|Sweet|1914|p=157}}

Blacks in the South made up a core element of the Republican Party. Their ministers had powerful political roles that were distinctive since they did not depend on White support, in contrast to teachers, politicians, businessmen, and tenant farmers.<ref>{{cite book |last=Grant |first=Donald Lee |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zpmjRm4cdswC&pg=PA264 |title=The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=1993 |isbn=978-0-8203-2329-9 |page=264}}</ref> Acting on the principle as stated by [[Charles H. Pearce]], an AME minister in Florida: "A man in this state cannot do his whole duty as a minister except he looks out for the political interests of his people." More than 100 Black ministers were elected to state legislatures during Reconstruction, as well as several to Congress and one, [[Hiram Rhodes Revels]], to the U.S. Senate.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=93}}

In a highly controversial action during the war, the [[Methodist Episcopal Church|Northern Methodists]] used the Army to seize control of Methodist churches in large cities, over the vehement protests of the [[Methodist Episcopal Church, South|Southern Methodists]]. Historian Ralph Morrow reports:{{sfnp|Morrow|1954|p=202}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Morrow |first=Ralph Ernest |title=Northern Methodism and Reconstruction |publisher=Michigan State University Press |year=1956 |location=East Lansing |oclc=301551}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}}{{sfnp|Stowell|1998|pp=30–31}}
{{blockquote|1=A War Department order of November 1863, applicable to the Southwestern states of the Confederacy, authorized the Northern Methodists to occupy "all houses of worship belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Church South in which a loyal minister, appointed by a loyal bishop of said church, does not officiate."}}

Across the North, several denominations—especially the Methodists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians, as well as the Quakers—strongly supported Radical policies. The focus on social problems paved the way for the [[Social Gospel]] movement. [[Matthew Simpson]], a Methodist bishop, played a leading role in mobilizing the Northern Methodists for the cause. Biographer Robert D. Clark called him the "High Priest of the Radical Republicans".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Clark |first=Robert D. |title=The Life of Matthew Simpson |publisher=Macmillan |year=1956 |location=New York |pages=245–267 |oclc=852504}}</ref> The Methodist Ministers Association of Boston, meeting two weeks after Lincoln's assassination, called for a hard line against the Confederate leadership:<ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/sourcebookofamer00norw |title=Sourcebook of American Methodism |date=1982 |publisher=Abingdon |isbn=9780687391400 |editor-last=Norwood |editor-first=Fredrick A. |location=Nashville |page=323 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref>{{sfnp|Sweet|1914|p=161}}
{{blockquote|1=Resolved, that no terms should be made with traitors, no compromise with rebels.... That we hold the national authority bound by the most solemn obligation to God and man to bring all the civil and military leaders of the rebellion to trial by due course of law, and when they are clearly convicted, to execute them.}}

The denominations all sent missionaries, teachers and activists to the South to help the freedmen. Only the Methodists made many converts, however.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Howard |first=Victor B. |url=https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1139&context=upk_united_states_history |title=Religion and the Radical Republican Movement, 1860–1870 |date=1990 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=9780813117027 |location=Lexington |pages=212–213 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200709085935/https://uknowledge.uky.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1139&context=upk_united_states_history |archive-date=July 9, 2020 |url-status=dead |via=University of Kentucky |access-date=February 1, 2024 }}</ref> Activists sponsored by the Northern Methodist Church played a major role in the Freedmen's Bureau, notably in such key educational roles as the bureau's state superintendent or assistant superintendent of education for Virginia, Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina.{{sfnp|Morrow|1954|p=205}}

Many Americans interpreted great events in religious terms. Historian Wilson Fallin Jr. contrasts the interpretation of the Civil War and Reconstruction in White versus Black Baptist sermons in Alabama. White Baptists expressed the view that:<ref name="Fallin" />
{{blockquote|1=God had chastised them and given them a special mission—to maintain orthodoxy, strict biblicism, personal piety, and traditional race relations. Slavery, they insisted, had not been sinful. Rather, emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction was a clear sign of God's favor.}}

In sharp contrast, Black Baptists interpreted the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction as:<ref name="Fallin">{{cite book |last=Fallin |first=Wilson Jr. |url=https://archive.org/details/upliftingpeoplet0000fall/page/n19/mode/2up |title=Uplifting the People: Three Centuries of Black Baptists in Alabama |date=2007 |publisher=University of Alabama Press |isbn=9780817380304 |series=Religion and American culture |location=Tuscaloosa |pages=52–53 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref>
{{blockquote|1=God's gift of freedom. They appreciated opportunities to exercise their independence, to worship in their own way, to affirm their worth and dignity, and to proclaim the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Most of all, they could form their own churches, associations, and conventions. These institutions offered self-help and racial uplift, and provided places where the gospel of liberation could be proclaimed. As a result, black preachers continued to insist that God would protect and help them; God would be their rock in a stormy land.}}

===Public schools===
Historian James D. Anderson argues that the freed slaves were the first Southerners "to campaign for universal, state-supported public education".{{sfnp|Anderson|1988|p=[https://archive.org/details/educationblackss00ande_055/page/n20 4]}} Blacks in the Republican coalition played a critical role in establishing the principle in state constitutions for the first time during congressional Reconstruction. Some slaves had learned to read from White playmates or colleagues before formal education was allowed by law; African Americans started "native schools" before the end of the war; Sabbath schools were another widespread means that freedmen developed to teach literacy.{{sfnp|Anderson|1988|pp=6–15}} When they gained suffrage, Black politicians took this commitment to public education to state constitutional conventions.

The Republicans created a system of public schools, which were segregated by race everywhere except New Orleans. Generally, elementary and a few secondary schools were built in most cities, and occasionally in the countryside, but the South had few cities.<ref name="Tyack Lowe"/><ref>{{Cite book |last=Vaughn |first=William Preston |title=Schools for All: The Blacks and Public Education in the South, 1865–1877 |date=2015 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=9780813155326}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=February 2024}}

The rural areas faced many difficulties opening and maintaining public schools. In the country, the public school was often a one-room affair that attracted about half the younger children. The teachers were poorly paid, and their pay was often in arrears.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=365–368}} Conservatives contended the rural schools were too expensive and unnecessary for a region where the vast majority of people were cotton or tobacco farmers. They had no expectation of better education for their residents. One historian found that the schools were less effective than they might have been because "poverty, the inability of the states to collect taxes, and inefficiency and corruption in many places prevented successful operation of the schools".{{sfnp|Franklin|1961|p=139}} After Reconstruction ended and White elected officials [[Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|disenfranchised Blacks]] and imposed [[Jim Crow]] laws, they consistently underfunded Black institutions, including the schools.

After the war, Northern missionaries founded numerous private academies and colleges for freedmen across the South. In addition, every state founded state colleges for freedmen, such as [[Alcorn State University]] in Mississippi. The normal schools and state colleges produced generations of teachers who were integral to the education of African American children under the segregated system. By the end of the century, the majority of African Americans were literate.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

In the late 19th century, the federal government established land grant legislation to provide funding for higher education across the United States. Learning that Blacks were excluded from land grant colleges in the South, in 1890 the federal government insisted that Southern states establish Black state institutions as [[land grant colleges]] to provide for Black higher education, in order to continue to receive funds for their already established White schools. Some states classified their Black state colleges as land grant institutions. Former Congressman [[John Roy Lynch]] wrote: "there are very many liberal, fair-minded and influential Democrats in the state [Mississippi] who are strongly in favor of having the state provide for the liberal education of both races".{{sfnp|Lynch|1913|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mayberry |first=B. D. |title=A Century of Agriculture in the 1890 Land Grant Institutions and Tuskegee University, 1890–1990 |date=1992 |publisher=Vantage Press |isbn=9780533095100 |location=New York}}</ref>

According to a 2020 study by economist [[Trevon Logan]], increases in Black politicians led to greater tax revenue, which was put towards public education spending (and land tenancy reforms). Logan finds that this led to greater literacy among Black men.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Logan |first=Trevon D. |date=2020 |title=Do Black Politicians Matter? Evidence from Reconstruction |journal=The Journal of Economic History |volume=80 |issue=1 |pages=1–37 |doi=10.1017/S0022050719000755 |issn=0022-0507 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

===Railroad subsidies and payoffs===
[[File:Atlanta roundhouse ruin3.jpg|thumb|Atlanta's [[rail yard]] and [[Railway roundhouse|roundhouse]] in ruins shortly after the end of the Civil War]]

Every Southern state subsidized railroads, which modernizers believed could haul the South out of isolation and poverty. Millions of dollars in bonds and subsidies were fraudulently pocketed. One ring in North Carolina spent $200,000 in bribing the legislature and obtained millions of state dollars for its railroads. Instead of building new track, however, it used the funds to speculate in bonds, reward friends with extravagant fees, and enjoy lavish trips to Europe.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=387}} Taxes were quadrupled across the South to pay off the railroad bonds and the school costs.

There were complaints among taxpayers because taxes had historically been low, as the planter elite was not committed to public infrastructure or public education. Taxes historically had been much lower in the South than in the North, reflecting the lack of government investment by the communities.{{sfnp|Franklin|1961|pp=141–148}}{{sfnp|Summers|2014a|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}} Nevertheless, thousands of miles of lines were built as the Southern system expanded from {{convert|11000|mi|km}} in 1870 to {{convert|29000|mi|km}} in 1890. The lines were owned and directed overwhelmingly by Northerners. Railroads helped create a mechanically skilled group of craftsmen and broke the isolation of much of the region. Passengers were few, however, and apart from hauling the cotton crop when it was harvested, there was little freight traffic.{{sfnp|Stover|1955|p=}} As Franklin explains: "numerous railroads fed at the public trough by bribing legislators&nbsp;... and through the use and misuse of state funds". According to one businessman, the effect "was to drive capital from the state, paralyze industry, and demoralize labor".{{sfnp|Franklin|1961|pp=147–148}}

===The Southern country store===
{{Further|Rural American history#Southern country store}}

Outside the South, there were plenty of small towns where merchants and storekeepers could prosper. In the antebellum South there was no counterpart. The Civil War had devastated the rural South, as cotton prices fell and the vast sums invested in slaves disappeared overnight.<ref>David B. Danbom, ''Born in the Country: A History of Rural America'' (2017) pp. 99–120.</ref> Before the Civil War plantation owners handled the cotton or tobacco matters and met consumer needs of their family and slaves. The dealt directly with wholesalers (called "factors") in far-off cities such as Baltimore, Louisville, and St Louis. In poor white areas there were occasional merchants before 1865. When slavery was abolished the rural South urgently needed merchants. Ambitious men suddenly appeared after 1865 and played a leading role in refashioning the economic and social fabric of the South. These merchants served as crucial intermediaries between rural communities and larger markets. Many if not most were Jewish peddlers and merchants; some had been in the South for decades and others were newly arrived from the North. They had a good rapport with their Black customers.<ref>John Dollard, ''Caste and Class in a Southern Town'' (1949) pp. 4, 128-130.</ref><ref>Hasia R. Diner,  ''A time for gathering : the second migration, 1820-1880'' (1992) pp.60-85. [https://archive.org/details/timeforgathering0000dine online]</ref><ref>Diane C. Vecchio,  "Making their way in the New South: Jewish peddlers and merchants in the South Carolina Up-Country." ''South Carolina Historical Magazine'' 113#2, (2012), pp. 100–24. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/41698099 online]</ref>

Merchants used the newly built railroads to link the rural cotton or tobacco economy to the national economy. They worked with wholesalers in the handful of Southern cities to bring in northern consumer products. Legally they depended on new state laws creating the "[[crop lien system]]". The merchant legally owned the entire commercial crop (usually cotton) from planting to harvest. He sold supplies on credit. When the crop was harvested the farmer brought it all to the merchant who then sold it, paid what the farmer owed the owner of the land, cleared the farmer's debt to the store, and returned the surplus if any. By providing credit to the poor white and black farmers, they exerted more influence every week than the white land owners.<ref>Thomas D. Clark, "The Furnishing and Supply System in Southern Agriculture since 1865," ''Journal of Southern History'' 12#1 (1946), pp. 24-44 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2197729 online]</ref>

The role of the country store extended beyond simple trade. It was a [[general store]] that provided a wide range of goods—pills, petticoats and plows and a hundred other items. The local federal post office was inside and there were benches outside for the bystanders. The farmers produced most of their own food, but they did buy necessities. In one Florida store with a largely Black clientele, the items most often purchased were corn, salt pork, sugar, lard, coffee, syrup, rice, flour, cloth, shoes, shotguns, shells, and patent medicines.   Everything had a price except the one item in greatest demand: gossip was free.<ref>Clifton L. Paisley,  "Van Brunt's Store, Iamonia, Florida, 1902-1911." ''Florida Historical Quarterly'' 48.4 (1969): 3+ [https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3160&context=fhq online]</ref>

Merchants took food and meat in trade and resold it. These merchants were not just shopkeepers but also acted as bankers and brokers, extending credit to poor farmers and hand pressed landowners. The customers needed supplies every week, but had an income only at the end of the harvest season. The merchants gave them credit in terms of the expected size of their cotton or tobacco crops. Sharecroppers had to give half or more of the crop to the landowner. The rest at harvest time went to the merchant who would sell advantageously, and close the credit accounts. Merchants were thus the liaison between rural areas and the few cities in the postwar South. They handled the flow of goods, information, and credit. Merchants depended on credit from urban wholesalers, and like the sharecroppers they paid off their own debts with proceeds from the cotton or tobacco harvests.<ref>The best source is Thomas C. Clark, ''Pills Petticoats and Plows: The Southern Country Store'' (1944) [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.156316/page/n1/mode/1up online]</ref><ref>Jacqueline P. Bull, "The General Merchant in the Economic History of the New South." ''Journal of Southern History'' 18.1 (1952): 37-59. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2954791 in JSTOR]</ref><ref>Lacy K.  Ford, "Rednecks and Merchants: Economic Development and Social Tensions in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1865-1900." ''Journal of American History''  71#2 (1984), pp. 294–318. [https://doi.org/10.2307/1901757 online]</ref>

In the paternalistic mill villages that opened in the South in the late 19th century, the textile mills provided jobs for all family members, rented them cheap housing and paid then −in script they used to buy food and supplies in company stores. Independent merchants were few.<ref>Holland Thompson, "Life in a Southern Mill Town." ''Political Science Quarterly'' 15.1 (1900): 1-13. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2140703.pdf online]</ref><ref>Dale Newman, "Work and community life in a southern textile town." ''Labor History'' 19.2 (1978): 204-225. https://doi.org/10.1080/00236567808584489</ref>

===Taxation during Reconstruction===
Reconstruction changed the means of taxation in the South. In the U.S. from the earliest days until today, a major source of state revenue was the [[property tax]]. In the South, wealthy landowners were allowed to self-assess the value of their own land. These fraudulent assessments were almost valueless, and pre-war property tax collections were lacking due to property value misrepresentation. State revenues came from fees and from sales taxes on slave auctions.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=375}} Some states assessed property owners by a combination of [[Land value tax|land value]] and a capitation tax, a tax on each worker employed. This tax was often assessed in a way to discourage a free labor market, where a slave was assessed at 75 cents, while a free White was assessed at a dollar or more, and a free African American at $3 or more. Some revenue also came from [[Poll tax (United States)|poll taxes]]. These taxes were more than poor people could pay, with the designed and inevitable consequence that they did not vote.

During Reconstruction, the state legislature mobilized to provide for public needs more than had previous governments: establishing public schools and investing in infrastructure, as well as charitable institutions such as hospitals and asylums. They set out to increase taxes, which were unusually low. The planters had provided privately for their own needs. There was some fraudulent spending in the postwar years; a collapse in state credit because of huge deficits, forced the states to increase property tax rates. In places, the rate went up to 10 times higher—despite the poverty of the region. The planters had not invested in infrastructure and much had been destroyed during the war. In part, the new tax system was designed to force owners of large plantations with huge tracts of uncultivated land either to sell or to have it confiscated for failure to pay taxes.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|p=376}} The taxes would serve as a market-based system for redistributing the land to the landless freedmen and White poor. Mississippi, for instance, was mostly frontier, with 90% of the bottom lands in the interior undeveloped.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

The following table shows property tax rates for South Carolina and Mississippi. Many local town and county assessments effectively doubled the tax rates reported in the table. These taxes were still levied upon the landowners' own sworn testimony as to the value of their land, which remained the dubious and exploitable system used by wealthy landholders in the South well into the 20th century.{{Citation needed|date=June 2024}}

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="margin:1em auto 1em auto"
|+ State Property Tax Rates during Reconstruction
! Year !! South Carolina !! Mississippi
|-
| 1869 || style="text-align:right;"|5 mills (0.5%)|| style="text-align:right;"|1 mill (0.1%) (lowest rate between 1822 and 1898)
|-
| 1870 || style="text-align:right;"|9 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|5 mills
|-
| 1871 || style="text-align:right;"|7 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|4 mills
|-
| 1872 || style="text-align:right;"|12 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|8.5 mills
|-
| 1873 || style="text-align:right;"|12 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|12.5 mills
|-
| 1874 || style="text-align:right;"|10.3–8 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|14 mills (1.4%) "a rate which virtually amounted to confiscation" (highest rate between 1822 and 1898)
|-
| 1875 || style="text-align:right;"|11 mills|| style="text-align:right;"|
|-
| 1876 || style="text-align:right;"|7 mills || style="text-align:right;"|
|-
| Sources || style="text-align:center;"|{{cite book|ref=none |url=https://archive.org/details/reconstructioni00reyngoog/page/n538 <!-- pg=2 --> |last=Reynolds |first=J. S. |title=Reconstruction in South Carolina, 1865–1877 |place=Columbia, SC |publisher=The State Co. |year=1905 |page=329}}|| style="text-align:center;"|{{cite book|ref=none |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Idw0AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA13 |last=Hollander |first=J. H. |title=Studies in State Taxation with Particular Reference to the Southern States |place=Baltimore |publisher=Johns Hopkins Press |year=1900 |page=192}}
|}

Called upon to pay taxes on their property, essentially for the first time, angry plantation owners revolted. The conservatives shifted their focus away from race to taxes.{{sfnp|Foner|1988|pp=415–416}} Former Congressman [[John R. Lynch]], a Black Republican leader from Mississippi, later wrote:{{sfnp|Lynch|1913|p={{page needed|date=October 2021}}}}
{{blockquote|1=The argument made by the taxpayers, however, was plausible and it may be conceded that, upon the whole, they were about right; for no doubt it would have been much easier upon the taxpayers to have increased at that time the interest-bearing debt of the state than to have increased the tax rate. The latter course, however, had been adopted and could not then be changed unless of course they wanted to change them.}}

===National financial issues===
[[File:Friedberg - 639.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|$20 banknote with portrait of Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch]]
The Civil War had been financed primarily by issuing short-term and long-term bonds and loans, plus inflation caused by printing paper money, plus new taxes. Wholesale prices had more than doubled, and reduction of inflation was a priority for Secretary McCulloch.<ref name="Schell 1930">{{cite journal |first=Herbert S. |last=Schell |title=Hugh McCulloch and the Treasury Department, 1865–1869 |journal=Mississippi Valley Historical Review |volume=17 |issue=3 |date=1930 |pages=404–421 |doi=10.2307/1893078 |jstor=1893078}}</ref> A high priority, and by far the most controversial, was the currency question. The old paper currency issued by state banks had been withdrawn, and Confederate currency was worthless. The national banks had issued $207&nbsp;million in currency, which was backed by gold and silver. The federal treasury had issued $428&nbsp;million in [[Greenback (1860s money)|greenbacks]], which was legal tender but not backed by gold or silver. In addition about $275&nbsp;million of coin was in circulation. The new administration policy announced in October 1865 would be to make all the paper convertible into specie, if Congress so voted. The House of Representatives passed the Alley Resolution on December 18, 1865, by a vote of 144 to 6. In the Senate it was a different matter, for the key player was Senator [[John Sherman]], who said that inflation contraction was not nearly as important as refunding the short-term and long-term national debt. The war had been largely financed by national debt, in addition to taxation and inflation. The national debt stood at $2.8&nbsp;billion. By October 1865, most of it in short-term and temporary loans.<ref>For an econometric approach, see: {{cite book |last=Ohanian |first=Lee E. |title=The Macroeconomic Effects of War Finance in the United States: Taxes, Inflation, and Deficit Finance |date=2018 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9780815349662 |location=London}}</ref> Wall Street bankers typified by [[Jay Cooke]] believed that the economy was about to grow rapidly, thanks to the development of agriculture through the [[Homestead Act]], the expansion of railroads, especially rebuilding the devastated Southern railroads and opening the [[First transcontinental railroad|transcontinental railroad line]] to the West Coast, and especially the flourishing of manufacturing during the war. The gold premium over greenbacks was $145 in greenbacks to $100 in gold, and the optimists thought that the heavy demand for currency in an era of prosperity would return the ratio to 100.<ref name="Schell 1930"/> A compromise was reached in April 1866, that limited the treasury to a currency contraction of only $10&nbsp;million over six months. Meanwhile, the Senate refunded the entire national debt, but the House failed to act. By early 1867, postwar prosperity was a reality, and the optimists wanted an end to contraction, which Congress ordered in January 1868. Meanwhile, the Treasury issued new bonds at a lower interest rate to refinance the redemption of short-term debt. While the old state bank notes were disappearing from circulation, new national bank notes, backed by species, were expanding. By 1868 inflation was minimal.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Myers |first=Margaret G. |url=https://archive.org/details/financialhistory00myerrich |title=A financial history of the United States |date=1970 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=9780231024426 |location=New York |pages=174–196 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Studenski |first1=Paul |url=https://archive.org/details/financialhistory0000paul |title=Financial History of the United States |last2=Kroos |first2=Herman E. |date=1963 |publisher=McGraw-Hill |edition=2nd |location=New York |oclc=492589832 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Unger |first=Irwin |url=https://archive.org/details/greenbackerasoci0000unge |title=The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance 1865–1879 |date=1964 |publisher=Princeton University Press |oclc=859833035 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Sharkey |first=Robert P. |url=https://archive.org/details/moneyclasspartye0000robe |title=Money, Class, and Party: An Economic Study of Civil War and Reconstruction |date=1967 |publisher=Johns Hopkins Press |location=Baltimore |oclc=1458620 |url-access=registration |via=Archive.org}}</ref>

=== Culture ===
[[Baseball]] rose to prominence during the Civil War, as it gave soldiers from around the country a common pastime. In the aftermath of the war, Northerners who were anxious to reconcile the nation sought to use the unifying powers of the sport mainly among white Americans, resulting in the [[Baseball color line|development of racial segregation]] in the sport.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Swanson |first=Ryan |date=2014-01-01 |title=When Baseball Went White |url=https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples/270/?utm_source=digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples/270&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages |journal=University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters}}</ref>