What were the conditions in the former confederacy that made any attempt at genuine reconstruction difficult?

Answer 1

As a result of the Civil War, the South was utterly devastated. There were many white Southerners who had invested in Confederate bonds during the war. Now, they were worthless, so those people had lost a lost of money and property. The abolition of slavery contributed to the further economic devastation of the white Southern population. The notion of the Confederacy's attempt to secede as a "lost cause" pervaded the South. Due to the large amount of people lost in the war, especially white males, the remainder of the population faced the difficult task of rebuilding on their own.

Many white Southerners looked with nostalgia back on the times of and before the Confederacy. Monuments of the "lost cause" embody the sentiment of tremendous loss experienced by the South. The glory of the Old South remained in their memory, which made it difficult to focus on the future, especially when the future was being taken away from them through the reconstruction policies of the North. The will of the Southerners to protect their way of life became stronger after they witnessed the loss of their previous way of life. They were determined to defend themselves, even though the Civil War was over, this time from Northern reconstruction.