How did the North and the South view the end of the Civil War and the idea of Reconstruction differently?

At the outset of the Civil War, to the dismay of the more radical abolitionists in the North, President Abraham Lincoln did not make abolition of slavery a goal of the Union war effort. To do so, he feared, would drive the border slave states still loyal to the Union into the Confederacy and anger more conservative northerners. By the summer of 1862, however, the slaves themselves had pushed the issue, heading by the thousands to the Union lines as Lincoln's troops marched through the South. Their actions debunked one of the strongest myths underlying Southern devotion to the "peculiar institution"-that many slaves were truly content in bondage-and convinced Lincoln that emancipation had become a political and military necessity. In response to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which freed more than 3 million slaves in the Confederate states by January 1, 1863, blacks enlisted in the Union Army in large numbers, reaching some 180,000 by war's end.

The reconstruction was a period of readjustment after the Civil War that was accompanied by violence and turmoil. The reconstruction had many important achievements including the establishment of black colleges such as Howard University and Fisk University. However, there was a proliferation of corruption in the newly established southern governments, and the task of rebuilding placed a heavy burden on northern economies