On this day
140 years ago, Georgia
became the final Confederate state to be readmitted to Congress during Reconstruction.  In the years prior to their readmission in
1870, the state had improved both their agricultural and manufacturing efforts from the
economic troubles caused by the Civil War.
These and other developments had a strong influence beyond just Georgia.  As Heather Cox Richardson argues in her
history West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America After
the Civil War, the work of Reconstruction is what created
a united vision of modern America,
out of the disparate groups of Northerners, Westerners, and Southerners.

As Georgia reentered Congress, Richardson
explains that Americans were struggling with questions of America’s
social and governmental identity.  Not
only were Americans in the midst of Reconstruction, but industrialism and
urbanism were on the rise.  This led to a
divide amongst Americans, between those who promoted a land of free labor and
those who saw an unequal society which the government should work to even.  All the while, the Western
United States was seen as a more open land where individualism
held sway, distanced from the corruption and conflict of the North and South.

Grab a copy
of West from Appomattox to find out how
the Confederate states’ rejoining of Congress and other moments and issues in
Reconstruction worked to mold the United States as we know it today.