what changes did the civil war bring about in civilian society, north and south?

The North's civilian society experienced very little little change, aside from the massive loss of so many young men. The South had a complete restructuring of social order. The slaves were now equal to them, although not treated that way until the 1960's. The South had to rebuild its bombed out cities, restructure its state governments, deal with northern troops overseeing reconstruction, and all of this with a large loss of men from the war. Women were left out of the whole deal, blacks were given equal rights, but women still did not have equal rights. One thing to remember is that Blacks were freed, but they often did not know what to do with their freedom so they signed labor contracts with their previous slave owners. These contracts kept the blacks in labor bondage to their previous slave owners. Some blacks however took advantage of their freedoms and went into politics, or attempted to open up their own business's.

Civilians had to provide for the war effort, so they made money from that. Unfortunately for the South that was confederate money that wasn't worth anything after the war. Many small villages and towns sent off all of their men, even the teens and oldsters, so they only had women to do the work and run things. This was years before Rosie the riveter, so many things just didn't get done. Women weren't allowed to vote, so they really weren't going to be behind a plow doing the planting either. Modern day people get the Hollywood version thanks to Gone With the Wind and other fictional accounts, but that picture was far from accurate. In the North, things weren't much better. Factories had to shut down due to lack of staff. West Point was turning out substandard graduates, some who could barely read, just to help the war effort. Everyone in the nation was fearful that America was going to soon become a ruins that would be swept up by a strong foreign nation like Britain or France.

Northern society remained about the same, but the south was a different case. Because the congress wanted to punish the south for the war no money was released to mhelp reconstruct the south. Lincoln had a plan to bring the deviststed south back into the union and help it re structure the cities and the agriculture it lost. However when he was killed his vice president didn't have the power to inforce his plan. It would take the south 40 years to get back to norman and get some of it's congressional rights back.

The southern people were left with nothing and this led to hatred of the north even into this time. Congress only let the states who succeeded back into the union after they aggred to accept thr laws that the northern congress had passed while the south was not allowed to vote.