Growing up in the south in history class we learned about all of the different challenges that the southerns faced after the war. The things I knew about the post civil war before chapter 15 were small details such as: the land in the south was not good because of all of the cotton plantations that we had before and during the war. This cash crop was not good for the land and destroyed the soil, this put a harsh drought to the southern farmers and it prevented them from having a good crops after the war and this was no good for the southern economy. After reading and studying chapter 15 I learned that president  Lincoln was going to be one of the biggest resources of the south because he was going to be good on the southerners and not "punish" them for the war they had caused. When booth shot Lincoln everything changed. Grant was a military leader and he wanted to punish them. He decided that there would be five military districts in the south all ran by a commissioner.

     
      The southerners did not like this one bit and felt controlled. I did not know that the south was under this much of control after the war. As the federal government came down on the south everyone went in debt especially the farmers because if they want to put crops in the ground they need money that they don't have.  I feel that is it important that it is good for the people that line in the south to know about our heritage. If we know about our heritage we know how we got to be where our economy is in the south. We learn about all of the segregation that happened only a few years before we were born- on a large scale- and we now know all of the sacrifices that not just the southerners took but also the African Americans had to take to be free and fight for there voting rights.