freedom ???

Ask any learned American to name the deadliest war the united state had ever been involved in and they would sure to say the Civil War. Equal perhaps to the Second World War the civil war had spawned more books fictional and none, movies also fictional or reenactment of actual events and battles. So much so that it is only dwarfed in bulk by academic papers in scholarly magazines on it causes and on its effects. Everywhere you go in the nation you are reminded of it. Either through museums or national parks dedicated to it. As if that is not enough every year, so called Civil War clubs commemorate certain key or bloody battles, like that of Gettysburg, by reenacting it. Full with authentic uniforms and arms down to the food they ate. But the effect of the Civil War cannot be only seen by such displays to its memory. The Civil War’s effect on the American consciousness and how the nation function as a nation is real. It is perhaps ironic that both sides of the conflict fought to attain the same goal, freedom. The north fought for freedom of the slaves, while the south fought for the freedom of maintaining its way of life. More then that the south fought to keep itself free from, what it perceived, as an interfering federal government. But what lessons did the united state derive from its deadliest of all wars; and above all how did it look back at the Civil War and even more importantly the prewar period. Did things truly change that much for the African now freed slaves in the reconstruction period or did things remain the same. Did they remain in poverty and harassed in their efforts for self-determination. Or did their northerner white liberators tried to carry them along to the their own status of life and living.
Gone With the Wind is perhaps the most famous movie about the civil war period other then perhaps the silent Birth of a Nation. Produced in 1939, it starred Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Vivien Leigh as Scarlet O'Hara. The movie follows the lives of its two heroes against the backdrop of the Civil War era, including what life was like before and during the reconstruction period. In it’s beginning the movie shows southerners in fine clothing and acting in genteel manners. That is how most American even now remembers the pre Civil War south. In fact the following words introduced the movie “ There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind…” But of course the truth was far from the prettily painted picture. The old south was filled with suffocating cotton plantations. With slaves, who were sold, bought, punished, rewarded, clothed, fed, married, divorced and finally allowed to live, all according to their masters whim and wish.
So did the American view of the south change after the civil war. Now days the south is viewed as backwards full of citizen who are in the majority uneducated and ardently racist. Who even after they had gone to war and their defeat still oppressed the black population. But was the south alone in their attitude. Northerners may claim equal rights and freedom but when it came to putting it to practice were they agreeable and eager? The answer was unfortunately was no. Though there were no organized lynching mobs as it was in the south and complete disregard to the human life of blacks. There was in the north an indifferent that is in many ways worse then what was happening to the blacks in the south. Worst of all was the unfulfilled promise of Forty acres and a mule promised to every freed slave. An economic force that would have lifted the blacks from their abject poverty, which continues to this day as was shamefully revealed after the hurricane Katrina crisis.
It is true that the united state was slow in learning the lessons of the civil war. That oppressed people will one day stand up and fight for their rights and what is due to them. No more can this be seen then in the events of 1863 depicted in the movie Gangs of New York. When finally low wages and slave-like work places driven the angry and hate filled workers to a deadly riot. When exploited immigrants turned to what they saw as the reason for their low wages and miserable life, not the owners and factories but their minority black coworkers. But were they to blame for their hatred. During the reconstruction period the north saw an influx of African American escaping the continued bigotry of the south seeking their fortune in industry of the north, an industry that had for long been dominated by European immigrants.
The victorious north had failed miserably to assimilate the south and usher it into the industrial age. Worse it failed to protect the freed slaves who now looked forward to make their living as free human beings with all due dignity. At first the north seemed genuine in its fight for freedom. In fact General Sherman, with the approval of the War Department, issued a Special Field Order No. 15 on January 16, 1865. The order stated that "the islands of Charleston south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering St. Johns River, Florida are reserved and set apart for the settlement of Negroes now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States." Furthermore, Sherman's order specified freedmen would be offered assistance "to enable them to establish a peaceable agricultural settlement." Then president Andrew Johnson in an act of what he hoped reconciliatory pardoned many of the landowners, who of course later pressured him to rescinded all land titles and return the lands to their previous owners. It was also president Johnson who vetoed the Homestead Act of 1862 and every other plan that would help the free slaves raise from their dismal economic status. Even efforts to have congress act failed. So in desperation the free slaves went back to work the fields from which they were liberated from few years back and it was as if the civil war had not been fought at all and half a million men did not give their lives to it.
So what is the conclusion of the civil war? What has the united sate learned from it? the answer to both is nothing. The civil war had again to be fought in the fifties on till the seventies and arguably till today. African Americans are still among the poorest minorities in the country. Plagued by ignorance and every other calamity to befall the people a modern society. They suffer from high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse and HIV. In every city in the nation they live in the most poorly maintained neighborhoods. They are discriminated against on a daily bases and blamed for, freely in secret and deviously in public, the affliction of the country. Still African American of today are in a much better condition then their forefathers. But above all the African American of today realized that in order to lift themselves from their condition they have to fight for themselves and that is a cause for hope.