Conclusion

Conclusion

In conclusion, what can be seen with the story of the Lowry clan and their influence in American culture serves more as a litmus test for North/South relations than with direct influence on American culture. The North and South obviously had views towards each other and despite the outlaw Lowry committing murders and illegal activities in what was American territory, those in the North had no quarrel with allowing this man to run amuck against the people who they saw as the cause of the war, and who led to this situation coming to fruition.

This is vital to understanding the Civil War era as a whole due to the wide reaching effects that this post war era had on the healing process that was suppose to take place following the conflict. As Bruce Catton eloquently put it that following the war the mood of men was far from logical or rational; “Nothing could be done rationally at that time because wars do not leave men in a ration mood. …, the American people greatly desired magnanimity and understanding and a reasonable handling of the vexing problems; but those virtues had gone out of fashion, and they could not immediately be reestablished. What happened after the war ended grew out of the hot barren years of anger and suspicion went baying down the trail of violence: the years n which bitter appeals to unleashed emotions had made the fury of a few the common affliction of all…”[1]

The era of Reconstruction was a period where more harm was inflicted upon the American culture than good, due to the emotional hatred that was built during being refused to be let go and placed within the texts of history. Instead, it was allowed to fester, to infect, to form a new cancer within American society, a cancer that would later be confronted by the masses of whites and blacks, Jews and Christians, Native Americans and all others, to demand that this be a nation where not only are all men created equal, but where a man is judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.[2]