University:
Arizona State University
Course:
HST 200 | Historical Themes
Academic year:

2024
Views:

98

Pages:

2
Author:

Thuyoul US

ASU HST 200 (Historical Themes) The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877 Sharecropping The majority of emancipated individuals continued to reside in the South on the land where their ancestors had labored as slaves for many generations. Rather than farming the fields owned by White plantation owners, they were desperate to acquire and grow their own property. In one instance, after General Sherman ordered that liberated individuals be given ownership to forty-acre plots, formerly enslaved residents on the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina first had dreams of owning the land they had labored on for many decades. Additional justification for these expectations came from the Freedmen's Bureau, which ordered that previously enslaved individuals be granted access to leases and titles to property in the South. Nevertheless, President Johnson took exception at these attempts. A blow to those liberated individuals who had started to develop the land as their own, as those on the South Carolina Sea Islands, was his order in 1865 to restore land to White proprietors. In the end, there was no land redistribution in the South. The shift to wage work coincided with the abolition of slavery. But for many who had been in slavery before, this conversion did not herald forth a new age of financial freedom. Freed individuals came out of slavery with little and required food, agricultural tools, and other basics to begin their new lives, even though they were not subjected to the same kind of unrelenting labor under the threat of violence. Store owners gave farmers credit under the crop-lien system, with the understanding that the debtors would reimburse the loan with a share of their next harvest. But the hefty interest rates levied by the creditors made it even more difficult for the liberated individuals to become economically independent. Sharecropping, a crop-lien system that benefited landowners, spread throughout the South. In accordance with the system, liberated individuals, sometimes on the same plantations where they had been slaves, rented the land on which they worked. Sharecroppers are another group of White individuals who were landless. Often using up to half of their produce, sharecroppers used their harvests as payment to their landlords. Sharecropping protected landowner interests and prevented emancipated individuals from establishing independent means of subsistence. Because the leases were year-to-year, the farmers had no incentive to make significant improvements to the property, and the high interest rates took more of their money away. Because of their debt, sharecroppers frequently found themselves stuck in an endless circle of debt, unable to both buy their own property and quit working for their creditors. For many centuries, sharecropping had negative effects on the whole South, drastically impeding economic growth and guaranteeing the region's continued status as an agricultural backwater.