14 Two Societies at War

1861–1865

In the fading months of war, during his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln expressed the hope that the war would end “with malice toward none; with charity for all.” It was an audacious wish given the carnage of the four bloody years of war and a hope dimmed by his martyrdom at the hands of an assassin just six weeks later. The peace he hoped for would have to overcome the strains of war. The economy of the South suffered miserable setbacks, reversing fortunes and exacerbating the impoverished lives of those already on the margins. The war overturned the political and social structure of southern communities and polarized opinions between the sections. Northerners squabbled with northerners and southerners with other southerners, heightening the challenge of finding common ground to build the just and lasting peace Lincoln wanted. Slavery, as Lincoln said, was “the cause of the war,” and its destruction was the war’s crowning achievement. The struggle to achieve freedom, initially won with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation then generally by the Thirteenth Amendment, changed the lives of former slaves. At the same time, it transformed the two societies at war, leaving no one untouched.