Slavery In Augusta County

Life as a citizen of the United States before, during, and after the Civil War would highly vary depending on race and living location. During the Civil War, Augusta County located on the Southern side of the Shenandoah Valley, was home to many plantation owners and even more slave laborers. Slavery was not only the main reason Augusta County prospered agriculturally and economically but it was also the reason the war initiated in 1861 between the Confederates of the South and Union soldiers of the North. Agriculture in Augusta County changed after the war because of the Union victory and gradual emancipation of slavery, which caused a downturn in economic growth, a shift in the Southern labor force, and a modification in crop production.

Post-war Southerners were faced with daily dilemmas that prolonged the reconstruction period. “The Valley Virginian”, a local post-war southern newspaper, complains in 1866 that Northern radicals are forcing them out of office and are not concerned with the rebuilding period needed for the south to survive (Torget and Ayers, Two Communities in the Civil War, 217). This is in direct opposition to President Johnson’s Amnesty Proclamation, which gave an official pardon to Southerners that took part in the war. Furthermore, the proposed 14th Amendment disputed by ex-confederates, as argued in the “Vindicator”, was also in opposition to Johnson’s Amnesty Proclamation, and was also stopping Southerners to get proper representation in congress which would further delay reconstruction in Augusta County (Two Communities in the Civil War, 219). The limited government support was not helped by the fact that Union Soldiers war tactics devastated the previously flourishing farmland. William T. Sherman, a Union general, commanded troops to not only burn fields in a March from Atlanta to Savannah, but also destroy food supplies saved by Southerners during the winter months (Bailey, Sherman’s March to the Sea). The South, especially Augusta County, was extremely dependent on these fields and excess food

By 1860 Southern states provided 2/3 of the United States cotton supply and about 80% of European cotton, in order to provide for European Cotton Mill expansion (lecture: 11/13/15). Before the Civil War, there were about 800,000 to 3.2 million slaves in order to keep up with this increasing demand for agriculture. The ending of the Civil War not only meant supposed freedom for blacks in the South, but it also meant a huge loss for southern plantation owners’ unpaid labor force. A southern planter elaborates the change in the labor force through a letter to his brother by telling him that “labour is all to hire” and that “expenses are very heavy” for the people hired to work the land (Valley of the Shadow: D. V. Gilkeson to Gilkeson's brother). A new system needed to be created in order to help both the plantation owners seeking labor and former slaves seeking jobs. This is where sharecropping came into play. Sharecropping was a system in which the owners of the lands would rent it out to laborers who would plant crops on it but who had to give the landowner a portion of the crop at the end of the year. However, there were many problems with this system that kept most of the laborers in debt year after year. Henry Blake, a former slave, experienced first hand the issues that came with reconstruction and the birth of