Answer:
The correct answer is Though both areas suffered from the war, the South fared much worse than the North.
The era after the Civil War was known as Reconstruction. This is due to the fact that the Union had to accept the Confederate states back into the US. Along with this, the South needed to be rebuilt from an economic and social standpoint. For example, the outlawing of slavery thanks to the 13th amendment made it so that the main labor system used in the South was now completely illegal. This meant that Southern plantation owners needed to employee citizens and pay them for their work.
Besides the social/economic changes that resulted from slavery, the damage in the Southern states due to the total war strategy used by William Sherman on his March to the Sea caused millions of dollars in damage to the South. Sherman's March to the Sea resulted in the destruction of thousands of crops, hundreds of miles of railroads, and other personal property. The South needed to fix/rebuild these elements of their society in order to recover,which took a significant amount of time and effort.