Chief Joseph Discussion
Now that Chief Joseph has surrendered, what does he say he wants for himself and his people? Compare his post-surrender goals to those we traditionally associate with the American dream–are they more alike or more dissimilar? What accounts for that?
Chapter Summary
The military aspect of the American Civil War lasted less than five years and ended in April 1865, but it would take another dozen years of Reconstruction to determine what the results of the war would be. The only questions clearly settled by the time of Appomattox were that the nation was indivisible and that slavery must end. The nation faced other issues with far-reaching implications. What would be the place of the freedmen in Southern society? How would the rebellious states be brought back into their “proper relationship” with the Union? The victorious North was in a position to dominate the South, but Northern politicians were not united in either resolve or purpose. For over two years after the fighting stopped, there was no coherent Reconstruction policy. Congress and the president struggled with each other, and various factions in Congress had differing views on politics, race, and union. Congress finally won control and dominated the Reconstruction process until Southern resistance and Northern ambivalence led to the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Enormous changes had taken place, but the era still left a legacy of continuing racism and sectionalism that was revealed when Southern whites established the Jim Crow system to evade the spirit of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Meanwhile the South continued its colonial relationship with the North, and Southern plain folk, black and white, found themselves trapped by crop liens in circumstances some felt were almost as bad as slavery.
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