TENANT FARMING AND SHARECROPPING When the Civil War ended, the big question concerned the state of the freed slaves of the South. Recovery of the southern economy depended on getting the freedmen back into the cotton fields. During the period of Reconstruction the Radical Republicans in Congress tried to convert the freedmen into small free-holding farmers, but the former slaves were simply not ready to manage their own farms. What emerged out of necessity was southern farm tenancy, a system of near slavery without legal sanctions. Instead of working in gangs as they had on antebellum plantations, the freedmen became tenants. In the decades after Reconstruction tenancy and sharecropping became the way of life in the Cotton Belt. As farm tenancy grew, a tenancy ladder evolved. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of farmers fell down the tenancy ladder rather than moving up it. Sharecropping and tenancy remained accepted as a normal part of southern life until the Great Depression. BIBLIOGRAPHY: David E. David E.
Scalawags Aftermath & Reconstruction Scalawags "White Southern Republicans" Native white Southern politicians who joined the Republican party after the war and advocated the acceptance of and compliance with congressional Reconstruction were labeled scalawags. To most white Southerners, scalawags were an unprincipled group of traitorous opportunists who had deserted their countrymen and ingratiated themselves with the hated Radical Republicans for their own material gain. Many scalawags were sincere in their belief that conformance with the dictated measures of the Reconstruction Acts was the best and fastest way to end Reconstruction and return the South to home rule. Lee's "Warhorse", Gen. Fascinating Fact: The dictionary defines scalawag as "scamp, reprobate, or an animal of little value because of its small size, condition, or age". Back to index page
About Sharecropping About Sharecropping SharecroppingTrudier Harris A practice that emerged following the emancipation of African-American slaves, sharecropping came to define the method of land lease that would eventually become a new form of slavery. Without land of their own, many blacks were drawn into schemes where they worked a portion of the land owned by whites for a share of the profit from the crops. They would get all the seeds, food, and equipment they needed from the company store, which allowed them to run a tab throughout the year and to settle up once the crops, usually cotton, were gathered. As a theme in literature, sharecropping stretches from the late nineteenth century into the contemporary era. Sharecropping as an impetus to migrate north occurs in some of the works of Richard Wright and John O. Alice Walker's characters would find sharecropping equally inescapable in The Third Life Of Grange Copeland (1970). From The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States.
Sharecropping and tenant farming Sharecropping was common throughout the South well into the twentieth century, and required the work of entire families. In this famous photograph, a six year-old girl picks cotton in Oklahoma. (Photograph by Lewis W. Hine. After the Civil War, thousands of former slaves and white farmers forced off their land by the bad economy lacked the money to purchase the farmland, seeds, livestock, and equipment they needed to begin farming. Tenant farmers usually paid the landowner rent for farmland and a house. Sharecroppers seldom owned anything. Over the years, low crop yields and unstable crop prices forced more farmers into tenancy. Next: Life on the land: Voices
Carpetbaggers & Scalawags - American Civil War In general, the term “carpetbagger” refers to a traveler who arrives in a new region with only a satchel (or carpetbag) of possessions, and who attempts to profit from or gain control over his new surroundings, often against the will or consent of the original inhabitants. After 1865, a number of northerners moved to the South to purchase land, lease plantations or partner with down-and-out planters in the hopes of making money from cotton. At first they were welcomed, as southerners saw the need for northern capital and investment to get the devastated region back on its feet. They later became an object of much scorn, as many southerners saw them as low-class and opportunistic newcomers seeking to get rich on their misfortune.
Sharecropping | Slavery By Another Name Bento After the Civil War, former slaves sought jobs, and planters sought laborers. The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping. Sharecropping is a system where the landlord/planter allows a tenant to use the land in exchange for a share of the crop. High interest rates, unpredictable harvests, and unscrupulous landlords and merchants often kept tenant farm families severely indebted, requiring the debt to be carried over until the next year or the next. Approximately two-thirds of all sharecroppers were white, and one third were black. 14th Amendment | Constitution | US Law Amendment XIV Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. Section 3. Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. Section 5.
<i>The Doom of Reconstruction: The Liberal Republicans in the Civil War Era</i> Find using OpenURL The Doom of Reconstruction: The Liberal Republicans in the Civil War Era (review) In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: This study of the liberal republican movement provides a sympathetic treatment of a small group of Republicans who were the founders of a challenge to the Republican party and the Ulysses S. Grant administration during the election of 1872. This group only reluctantly supported many of the Union government war policies, which expanded and centralized federal power and threatened their long-standing faith in limited government and "classical republicanism" (210). The liberal republican movement, according to this study, originated in Missouri and soon recruited prominent Republicans in the East who shared similar values. Slap presents his study as a correction of "old, flawed interpretations of the liberal republicans" (xviii). Copyright © 2008 The Kent State University Press Project MUSE® - View Citation Howard W. Allen, H.
American Experience | Reconstruction: The Second Civil War | Black Legislators The Civil Rights Act of 1866 granted citizenship and the same rights enjoyed by white citizens to all male persons in the United States "without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude." President Andrew Johnson's veto of the bill was overturned by a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress, and the bill became law. Johnson's attitude contributed the growth of the Radical Republican movement, which favored increased intervention in the South and more aid to former slaves, and ultimately to Johnson's impeachment. 1866 Civil Rights Act 14 Stat. 27-30, April 9, 1866 A.D. CHAP. XXXI.An Act to protect all Persons in the United States in their Civil Rights, and furnish the Means of their Vindication.
WGBH American Experience . U.S. Grant: Warrior . Rise of the Ku Klux Klan Herb Peck A KKK Member At the time of Ulysses S. Grant's election to the presidency, white supremacists were conducting a reign of terror throughout the South. In outright defiance of the Republican-led federal government, Southern Democrats formed organizations that violently intimidated blacks and Republicans who tried to win political power. The most prominent of these, the Ku Klux Klan, was formed in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865. Racist activity in the South often took the form of riots that targeted blacks and Republicans. In this violent atmosphere, the Ku Klux Klan grew in size and strength. White Southerners from all classes of society joined the Klan's ranks. In the time leading up to the 1868 presidential election, the Klan's activities picked up in speed and brutality. Across the South, the Klan and other terrorist groups used brutal violence to intimidate Republican voters. In the 1868 presidential election, Republican Ulysses S.
Reconstruction - American Civil War 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.