The surviving Confederate soldiers came straggling back to communities, which
were now far from being satisfactory dwelling places for civilized people.
Everywhere they found missing many of the best of their former neighbors. They
found property destroyed, the labor system disorganized, and the inhabitants
in many places suffering from want. They found the white people demoralized
and sometimes divided among themselves and the Negroes free, bewildered, and
disorderly, for organized government had lapsed with the surrender of the
Confederate armies.

Beneath a disorganized society lay a devastated land. The destruction of
property affected all classes of the population. The accumulated capital of
the South had disappeared in worthless Confederate stocks, bonds, and
currency. The banks had failed early in the war. Two billion dollars invested
in slaves had been wiped out. Factories, which had been running before the war
or were developed after 1861 in order to supply the blockaded country, had
been destroyed by Federal raiders or seized and sold or dismantled because
they had furnished supplies to the Confederacy. Mining industries were
paralyzed. Public buildings which had been used for war purposes were
destroyed or confiscated for the uses of the army or for the new freedmen's
schools. It was months before courthouses, state capitols, school and college
buildings were again made available for normal uses. The military school
buildings had been destroyed by the Federal forces. Among the schools which
suffered were the Virginia Military Institute, the University of Alabama, the
Louisiana State Seminary, and many smaller institutions. Nearly all these had
been used in some way for war purposes and were therefore subject to
destruction or confiscation.

The farmers and planters found themselves "land poor." The soil remained, but
there was a prevalent lack of labor, of agricultural equipment, of farm stock,