The Reconstruction.

The characteristic feature of the US in the 2d part of the 19century was a rapid economic growth which made the US the most powerful nation in the world.It was a direct result of the Civil War which abolished slavery, broke the political power of the southern planters & openned the way for a free capitolist development of all the states. The 12 years that followed the Civil War 1865-1877 r called the period of Reconstruction. During this period the south was occupied by the N troops & democracy made some real progress. The blacks were given the right to vote, & a number of them were elected to the US Congress, & to various state legislatures in the S. Even a certain amount of land reform was carried out.

The Reconstruction policy was adopted for 2 reasons:

• The idealistic wing of the Republican party wished to protect the blacks, but the materialistic wing hoped to get power & offices in the S.
• The latter included fortune hunters/carpet beggars. These were disreputable politicians who had come from the N for their own profit.

Many southerners refused to cooperate with new elected bodies & in 1886 the defeated S planters founded a secret organisation the Ku-Klux-Klan. It was an instrument of terror against the newly freed slaves.

By 1887 the N troops were withdrawn from the S & it gave the Ku-Klux-Klan 7 other anti-black elements a free hand in terrorizing the black population.

The Democratic Laws passed during the Reconstruction were repealled. Black members were forced out of Congress & state legistatures, & the black were forced into the system of sharecropping.

Sharecropping is a semi-feudal form of tenant farming. The plantations were owned by white planters & a large share of crops raised by the tenants belonged to the planter. Sharecropping was introduced after the Civil War as a specific form of economic dependence of the freed blacks on the whites.

In 1867 the US bought Alaska from Russia. In 1869 the 1^st transcontinental railway was completed, it openned the way to a colonization & economic expluotation of the West. Over 20 mln immigrants entered the Us btw 1870-1910. Many of them were highly skilled workers. A lot of industrial centres grew in that time. Mechanical means of transport were availuable, the agriculture & mineral resources provided the country with food & row materials for industry.

Owing to this exeptionally fabarable conditions the economic growth in the period was extremely rapid by 1890 the US surfast Britain & became the leading world power. By 1900 the US output exceeded that of Britain & Germany combined. Imperialism in the US had reached the highest stage. This was accomponied by futher territorial expention.

Btw 1889-1898 the US occupied Samoa, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, Phillippines. Though cuba was formally independent it was under the US onfluence.

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