A Year In The South(BOOK) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

A Year In The South(BOOK) - Essay Example What follows then is a compelling story of hope, despair and tribulations during the collapse of the confederacy and the raise of a new south to show, that the end of the civil war impacted heavily across all persons from different backgrounds and classes. The end of the civil war brought with it an overwhelming financial crisis. Poverty was widespread and all the southerners were undergoing a turbulent time in making their ends meet. In the book, Cornelia was one of the vast refugees who fled as a result of lack of food during the civil war era (Brown, p.4). Even in her new home, Lexington Virginia, she still had to struggle to obtain food for herself and her seven children. In public she casts herself as a cheerful and jovial figure but when alone she says that she would, â€Å"go up the stairs and throw myself on my knees and cry to God for food† (Ash, p.167). Louis Hughes, on the other hand, is a freed slave battling to gain independence and self-sufficiency for him and his family by envisioning that the end of the war would mark his independence together with the other slaves. He thus engages in the business of selling tobacco plugs within the slave community. The business was booming at the beginning, but with the collaps e of the confederate authority in the state he says that his, â€Å"happy interlude† came to an end (Ash, p.28). Besides the economic downturn caused by the confederate war, Steven V. Ash also manages to capture the social, as well as the political turmoil that were taking shape upon the demise of the confederate south. Samuel Agnew, being the son of a minister and later a minister himself, was exempt from conscription into the confederate military. However, towards the end of the war Agnew is forced to accept the political changes that were taking place in the south. He was forced to accept the freedom of all slaves who toiled in his