Post-Civil War Era in America

Cleveland Christian Home

The end of slavery. Failed Reconstruction. The Industrial Revolution. A sense of the world becoming new and different, yet trying to catch up. “The post-Civil War period in America was a time of rapid social change.”

“The nation’s destiny rested on its future citizens. There was a growing recognition that children were individuals who needed careful preparation for adulthood,” yet “in the transition to a world that became increasingly mechanistic and pluralistic, cities became cauldrons of poverty and disease; social and medical technology had not kept pace. Many children suffered the misery of being left parentless or of being abandoned on doorsteps. By 1880, the streets of American cities had become the only home for tens of thousands of children.”

“…A concerned churchwoman named Sarah Matilda Hart Younkin could not understand why so many local churches seemed oblivious to the human misery of city slums, especially those in St. Louis, where the Christian Church was strong. Her own childhood memories of losing her father made her search for ways to alleviate the hardship of the orphan and the poor.” (Inasmuch, p23.)