Hence the
South's fierce resistance to his abolitionist agenda. In 1864, the
Republicans became so unpopular, they had to change their name to the
Union Party. Lincoln's vice-president, Johnson, actually was a
Democrat and hailed from Tennessee, a seceding state.
He was the only senator from a seceded state to remain in the Senate.
Reconstruction started long before the war ended, in Union-occupied
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Slave tax was an important source
of state revenue in the South (up to 60 percent in South Carolina).
Emancipation led to near bankruptcy.
The Union states of Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wisconsin refused to
pass constitutional amendments to confer suffrage on black males. The
Union army consigned black labor gangs to work on the plantations of
loyal Southerners and forcibly separated the black workers from their
families.
Contrary to myth, nearly two thirds of black families were headed by
both parents. Slave marriages were legally meaningless in the
antebellum South, though. But nearly 90 percent of slave households
remained intact till death or forced separation. The average age of
childbirth for women was 20.
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