1) Describe in detail the system or systems of labor that emerged in the South after the end of the Civil War. What was the impact of the South's postwar economic transformation on Southern whites and blacks during Reconstruction? Sharecropping emerged in the sout after theend of the civil war. Sharecropping is when a land owner allows workers to use part of the land in agreement that part of what is produced is given back to the owner. With many of the men having faught and dide, the women had to maintain the plantations. Wage labor also developed for sugar plantations. The economy was slowly rebuilt, but took a major impact after the war. The impact was less production, because of less forced labor. 2) Describe and discuss the Thirteen,
Moreover, they were discontented with the approach that the government had taken towards the situation. After the civil war, America found itself with a high production rate, resulting in overproduction and falling prices, as well as an increase in economic stress and the beginning of panic and prosperity cycles. The wars demand for products had called for a more efficient production system; therefore new machinery had come into place. New tools, such as the reaper, shown in document D, the wheat harvest of 1880, were introduced and facilitated production for farmers, making overproduction more probable. Variation in prices began to occur as shown in document A, Agriculture prices in 1865-1900, where a greater amount of goods became available for a more convenient price.
In the South, however, the economy was predominantly agricultural. Cotton and tobacco plantations relied heavily on the free labor of slaves for their economic prosperity. They saw the urbanization and industrialization of the North, and the economic connection between the North a...
Slavery had a big impact on the market, but most of it was centered on the main slave crop, cotton. Primarily, the south regulated the cotton distribution because it was the main source of income in the south and conditions were nearly perfect for growing it. Cheap slave labor made it that much more profitable and it grew quickly as well. Since the development in textile industry in the north and in Britain, cotton became high in demand all over the world. The south at one point, was responsible for producing “eighty percent of the world’s cotton”. Even though the South had a “labor force of eighty-four percent working, it only produced nine percent of the nations manufactured goods”, (Davidson 246). This statistic shows that the South had an complete advantage in manpower since slavery wasn’t prohibited. In the rural South, it was easy for plantation owners to hire slaves to gather cotton be...
Secondly, the demand for cotton grew tremendously as cotton became an important raw material for the then developing cotton industries in the North and Britain. The growing of cotton revived the Southern economy and the plantations spread across the south, and by 1850 the southern U.S produced more than 80% of cotton all over the world. As this cotton based economy of the south grew so did the slave labor to work in these large scale plantations since they were more labor-intensive...
After the devastation left from the Civil War, many field owners looked for new ways to replace their former slaves with field hands for farming and production use. From this need for new field hands came sharecroppers, a “response to the destitution and disorganized” agricultural results of the Civil War (Wilson 29). Sharecropping is the working of a piece of land by a tenant in exchange for a portion of the crops that they bring in for their landowners. These farmhands provided their labor, while the landowners provided living accommodations for the worker and his family, along with tools, seeds, fertilizers, and a portion of the crops that they had harvested that season. A sharecropper had “no entitlement to the land that he cultivated,” and was forced “to work under any conditions” that his landowner enforced (Wilson 798). Many landowners viewed sharecropping as a way to elude the now barred possession of slaves while still maintaining field hands for labor in an inexpensive and ample manner. The landowners watched over the sharecroppers and their every move diligently, with harsh supervision, and pressed the sharecroppers to their limits, both mentally and physically. Not only were the sharecroppers just given an average of one-fourth of their harvest, they had “one of the most inadequate incomes in the United States, rarely surpassing more than a few hundred dollars” annually (Wilson 30). Under such trying conditions, it is not hard to see why the sharecroppers struggled to maintain a healthy and happy life, if that could even be achieved. Due to substandard conditions concerning sharecropper’s clothing, insufficient food supplies, and hazardous health issues, sharecroppers competed on the daily basis to stay alive on what little their landowners had to offer them.
During the 20th century, radical transformation was occurring to the political status of African Americans. Blacks were freed from slavery during the nineteenth century and many African Americans were farmers unlike white, whites worked outside of Farm. Many black children did not go to school and white children did. However, during the 20th century economically African Americans stopped working at the farms, and nearly twice likely to own their own homes (Maloney). Even after this period, African Americans still had disadvantages in terms of education, work, home ownership, labor of success, etc. The sharecropping system was made to allow African Americans land however; whites did not want them to gain profit from their crops or own land.
The North and South were forming completely different economies, and therefore completely different geographies, from one another during the period of the Industrial Revolution and right before the Civil War. The North’s economy was based mainly upon industrialization from the formation of the American System, which was producing large quantities of goods in factories. The North was becoming much more urbanized due to factories being located in cities, near the major railroad systems for transportation of the goods, along with the movement of large groups of factory workers to the cities to be closer to their jobs. With the North’s increased rate of job opportunities, many different people of different ethnic groups and classes ended up working together. This ignited the demise of the North’s social order. The South was not as rapidly urbanizing as the North, and therefore social order was still in existence; the South’s economy was based upon the production of cotton after Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin. Large cotton plantations’ production made up the bulk of America’s...
Prior to the Civil War there were economic and social differences between the North and the South. The South became dependent on cotton and slavery. Instead, the North was becoming industrial rather than agricultural. The main difference the between the both sides was one was based on plantation systems and the other city life. The change in the economy caused people of the North to work together. While the South’s society remained the same old social class system.
“These men rose to power in a region embedded in a capitalist country, and their social system emerged as part of a capitalist world.” However, that does not indicate that the South was capitalist. Genovese argues the opposite that the Antebellum South was rather pre-capitalist. “Their society, in its spirit and fundamental direction, represented the antithesis of capitalism”. Slavery inhibited the economic development of the South and endangered the social stability of the South due to their irrational tendencies. These irrational tendencies allowed them to maintain the master-slave relationship but allowed the South to fall behind the North. Genovese states that “the capital outlay is much greater and riskier for slave labor than for free” and “the sources of cheap labor usually dry up rather quickly, and beyond a certain point costs become excessively burdensome”. Why maintain a labor system that is unstable? With the increase of production and slaves results in a labor system that the South cannot sustain. The slaves’ production was also inefficient. However, Slaves were found to be efficient “in hemp, tobacco, iron, and cotton factories” and “received a wide variety of privileges and approached an elite status.” The South could have industrialized and expanded the economy with these factories but the master-slave relationship if disturbed can lead to a power shift in the South. If the blacks approached
African American living conditions within the south were still extremely poor almost 100 years after the end of the Civil War. Due to regional and state legislation retaining the ability to make decisions surrounding civil rights, miniscule amounts of progress had been made. ‘Jim Crow’ laws both directly endangered black citizens and severely limited their rights, allowing whites to maintain dominance over social and economic conditions in the South. These laws included specifications such as the poll tax, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and segregation. The political conditions overall resulted in a stark, two-tiered system that placed blacks as second class citizens (Cassedy). Economic inequality also contributed to mistreatment of African American citizens. After the abolition of slavery, sharecropping became common. Sharecropping involved ex-slaves, or their descendants, renting land from plantation owners and farming it in exchange for high charges. A single bad year could tip the balance into utter destitution, whether from unbalance surrounding supply and demand, or crop loss stemming from climate extremes or pests. Overall...
American farmers found themselves facing hard times after the Civil War. In the West, the railroad had opened up enormous opportunities. Farmers were now able to cultivate land that had previously been to far from the Eastern markets to make a profit. However, that opportunity came at a price. The farmers increasing dependence on the railroads and other commercial interests made them an easy target for exploitative business practices.
...white framers became dependent on local merchants to sell their goods to other people. However, the landowners still complained about a "labor shortage." The sharecropping system emerged as the dominant labor system in the South. The sharecropping system was a system of agricultural in which a landowner would allow a tenant to use their land. African Americans started to rent individual plots to do their own work. The share cropping system placed a premium on utilizing the labor of all the family members in the family.
Abner Snopes sharecrops for a living. His sharecropping results in his resentment of the wealthy. As you know, sharecroppers are tenant farmers who pay as rent a share of their crop for wealthy people. Sharecropping was common during this era; McCullough notes that “when the sharecroppers receive their portion of the money from the crops they plant, the debts they have developed comes out of their half of the money. This often leaves the sharecropper with nothing. Between the debt and the hard working conditions, a second form of slavery is created. It was not slavery with a p...
There was still not a lot of opportunity for African American workers. Some industries such as the textile industry offered almost no opportunity for African Americans, but some industries such as tobacco and iron provided some, but not a lot. Even with all of the problems and discrepancies, the south still grew economically in the post-reconstruction period of the “New South”.
The American Civil War was the bloodiest military conflict in American history leaving over 500 thousand dead and over 300 thousand wounded (Roark 543-543). One might ask, what caused such internal tension within the most powerful nation in the world? During the nineteenth century, America was an infant nation, but toppling the entire world with its social, political, and economic innovations. In addition, immigrants were migrating from their native land to live the American dream (Roark 405-407). Meanwhile, hundreds of thousand African slaves were being traded in the domestic slave trade throughout the American south. Separated from their family, living in inhumane conditions, and working countless hours for days straight, the issue of slavery was the core of the Civil War (Roark 493-494). The North’s growing dissent for slavery and the South’s dependence on slavery is the reason why the Civil War was an inevitable conflict. Throughout this essay we will discuss the issue of slavery, states’ rights, American expansion into western territories, economic differences and its effect on the inevitable Civil War.