After reading David Oshinksy’s “Worse than Slavery” I feel as though it opened my eyes to how horrific time was during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Reading this document has made me realize how devastated southerners were after the war had ended. Growing up I was taught that the confederacy was bad and full of racism. This document allows me to read and understand that the south lost everything. They truly got what they deserved after enslaving so many people but their land was in ruin along with their currency. I have learned and realized how humiliated the south became. After I read a section of the article that compared the south to a giant hospital and reading how much money was spent in 1866 just on limbs alone was astonishing. Living…show more content… That specific state stood for something unimaginable. It even states in the article that killing in Mississippi was next to nothing. Senators were killing each other and lynching freedmen like it was a regular festivity. The people of Mississippi were conniving and controlling to the extent of murder. The horrific Mississippi is something I feel is skipped over in most history classes throughout high school and even middle school. Oshinky really draws a picture of Mississippi quite well. Mississippians were monsters in the 1860’s. This ideal image I have had my whole life on the Civil War has altered completely from reading this document. I see a land and a story that is filled with hatred. That is what this whole war was about. The war made people greedier than people thought they could actually ever be. The people of this time period were so befuddling to my mind that I cannot fathom the idea of living in this time period. Death and murder were something spoken of and looked at as something small and common. While growing up I think that students have this idea of war and that people are being killed or that there are beautiful spaces of land filled with slaves with a plantation owner and his beautiful wife; that is the image that has been drawn. Oshinsky created a greater picture, a picture that is far more detailed. This is why this document is important. This is why this document is read and shared among historians. Oshinky made this specific time in history more authentic, more horrific, more humiliating for our