Mary - Journeytohistory

2+4 From Slavery to Freedomproclamations and ended with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment latein 1865.The end of the war marked a victory for the abolitionists.The Thirteenth.\mcndmem At no time in the nation's history had a pressure group done soabolishing slm'err much to shape public opinion and then to move opinion to action.For a generation they had labored tirelessly, sufferingabuse and even bodily harm. For them, however, abolition was a moral crusade,and they were blind to personal indignities and insensible to suffering.More effectively than ever before in our history these people had roused the nation'sconscience to its sins and misdeeds. Up to the present day, Americansstill feel the effects of the morality in human relations that was the creed ofabolitionists.For blacks, Lee's surrender was a victory. At last they had achieved whathuman beings everywhere have always wanted-freedom. The end of the warbrought to a close a period of enslavement that had lasted for almost 250 years.The desire for freedom had been kept alive through the centuries by thoseblacks who demonstrated by their conduct that freedom and the right to ittranscended racial lines. The victory was won in part by their struggles throughthe centuries as well as by their service in the final battles.Paradoxically, the end of the war was also a victory for the South. To besure, it had suffered military reverses and had lost much. But it also had beendelivered from the domination of an institution that had stifled its economicdevelopment and rendered completely ineffective its intellectual life. Opportunitiesfor extensive development in new areas of economic activity had hardlyexisted in the South, and because it was sensitive to criticism of slavery, the regionhad expelled both freedom of speech and the talents that flourish only infreedom. It was a great day for the South when at last it could be realistic ineconomic life and its churches, schools, and writers could face the truth andexpress it as they saw it. At least. no system of slavery any longer demandedthat they do otherwise.The end of the war was, moreover, the beginning of a new era in the historyof the United States. The economic revolution ushered in by the tremendousforces let loose in war was to transform every phase of American life and to createnew problems and injustices for reformers to solve. In the new era the Republicanswould have to find a new faith for their party, and the abolitionistsnew social ills to eradicate. Blacks would have to perfect their freedom in a societythat was changing so rapidly that adjustment would be difficult even forthe best educated of them. For all Americans, perhaps the greatest problemthat arose out of the Civil War and its economic aftermath was to find a way toretain freedom, the desire for which had become almost an obsession, and yetat the same time to enjoy security, which was becoming more precarious in thenew economic order. As black people and white people set out to find the perfectbalance between freedom and security in post-Civil War America, democracyfaced a new test.