ing to weave them into a new pattern.
In the long run, this effort would be successful, though the policies of Reconstruction as such were not necessarily responsible for the recovery. Many southern states did whatever they could to slow progress in certain areas--the "Jim Crow" laws, for instance, which helped keep whites and blacks separated in public places and for public services.
The end of the Civil War left the South in dire economic straits, and there was little doubt what sort of Reconstruction program the South preferred. The physical damage to the South was considerable, and everywhere the armies had met there were burnt-out cities, destroyed plantations and farms, and devastation wrought by foraging troops. By the end of the war, over $1.5 billion of Confederate currency was virtually worthless, and those who had invested in Confederate bonds (some $700 million of which were sold) could recover nothing. When the Confederacy confiscated northern property in the southern states, it had required southern businessmen to pay debts owed to northerners into the Confederate treasury. Those debts were reinstated after the war, and southerners would have to pay them off once again, this time to the rightful creditors. Finally, all southern capital invested in slaves was gone, leaving the South crushed by de
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