Rebuilding+the+economy

The postwar economic rebuilding process failed because plantations and former landowners were unable to regain the success and prosperity they had using slave labor, which was no longer available. Another reason for the failure was the largely unsuccessful attempt to integrate freed slaves into the economic workforce through sharecropping and wage labor; this resulted in tremendous economic losses, especially in Southern states such as Virginia and Georgia. Also, many plantations and towns in the South were pillaged and burned during the war which led to much poverty and depression of Southern society. Sherman's March to the sea in Georgia during the end of the war caused much of this in Georgia.
 * Rebuilding the Economy**

Small white farmers were forced into cotton production due to their fiscal problems while many blacks were forced to take up sharecropping as a way of surviving. Both white and black farming efforts, either sharecropping or wage labor, were economic failures in the midst of a crumbling Southern society.

In the North, an industrial boom resulted, giving rise to further economic separation between the owners and the factory workers; this was extremely evident in states where factories and manufacturing doubled like Pennsylvania and New York.