The tactics used in the Civil War quickly turned from conventional methods of war for the time period to more brutal and damaging as time progressed. Both the Union and the Confederacy wished for the Civil War to be a quick battle between the two, as time progressed it became evident that this was not going to happen. This led to the employment of a total war strategy. General Sherman targeted both the military targets as well as key economic infrastructure (Majewski, Sherman’s March). The destruction crippled both the Confederacy’s economy and morale. Sherman was a vital reason for the end of the war, yet his relentlessness brought about resentment that bled into the Reconstruction Era. Total warfare was a way to bind the civilian population …show more content…
Federal support of large corporations resulted in antipathy towards a strong central government. The dislike of the nation's government played a key role in ending reconstruction, and creating a new system where the burden of being at the bottom of the economic ladder did not solely fall on African Americans, but instead the small farmer or wage worker- regardless of race. In the South, the system of exploitation remained very similar to what was seen pre-Civil War. The Southern economy was dependent on free labor, this is why the emancipation of slaves damaged the economy so badly during the Civil War(Majewski, Free Labor Ideology and the Mexican War). While the Union decidedly won the war because of black soldiers and the liberation of slaves, it failed to consider what the rebuilding of the former Confederacy’s economy would entail. Much like before the Civil War, the South considered exploitation to be too good of a tool to stop using. The new system of exploitation in the south became sharecropping. Sharecropping benefitted the same people that slavery