Parallels In U.S. History - Essay Example

The Confederates were defeated and surrendered on April 9, 1865. The Civil War succeeded in providing equal civil rights to all Americans. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared freedom for slaves in all Confederate States. Congress passed the 13th (1865), 14th (1868) and 15th (1870) Amendments to the Constitution outlawing slavery, confirming citizenship of blacks and making it illegal to deny the right to vote on the basis of race. Business and the Economy developed and expanded after the Civil War.

American industry changed dramatically. Machines were used to replace hand labor. Major inventions took place such as the typewriter (Christopher Latham Sholes), farm equipment (Deere & Co.) and celluloid (John Wesley Hyatt). Telegraph lines and railroads began to reshape the economy. The American Railway system became a nationwide transportation network that spurred economic growth. Investors invested huge sums of money in the stocks and bonds of corporations; banks lent corporations money to expand their business activities.

Industrial growth caused cities to expand as people began to migrate in record numbers. In contrast, the South, badly hit by major wartime losses, failed Confederate currencies and disintegrated labor supply, suffered a doomed economy, with large farms broken into parcels and given out to tenant farming: the tenant farmers lacked the incentive to improve land that was not their own, and the land owners did not have full control over production. In Art and Architecture, artists like Jasper Cropsey and Albert Bioerstadt popularized landscape painting.

American realism entered art during the Civil War with artists like Winslow Homer and Lily Martin Spencer painting civil war scenes. The Civil War resulted in a large demand for statues of leading figures such