The Civil War resolved several longstanding problems in the Republic. For one, it laid the threat of secession to rest; the Union was now perpetual, as Andrew Jackson had proclaimed in 1832. It also destroyed slavery, and with it the most "peculiar" feature of the culture of the Old South. With the agrarian South vanquished and impoverished, the industrial North now stood unchallenged as the nation's dominant section politically and economically, and the nation's course toward full industrialization was unabated. But the war had also created new problems. What rights the former slaves would have--and what their place would be in American society--remained unclear. Similarly, the process by which the former states of the Confederacy would regain their previous rights was uncertain.

Yet if the potential for far-reaching change existed at the end of the war, key elements of the American political tradition continued to hold sway and exerted a restraining influence. For example, Americans remained committed to the federal system. Although the federal government exercised greater power after the war than before, most Americans continued to believe that protecting individual rights was the responsibility of the states. In addition, the fear of a standing army, a heritage of the Revolution, remained undiminished. Not only did the Union Army quickly demobilize, but Northerners grew uncomfortable with the thought of a prolonged military occupation of the South or the active intervention of the Army in domestic affairs. Finally, bolstered by the market revolution, Americans remained wedded to the doctrines of private property, self-reliance, and individual achievement, values that worked against any program of government assistance to the freed people. Within this mix of change and tradition--of the possibility to overthrow the past and the desire to conserve it--Reconstruction took shape and eventually unraveled.