Reconstruction: The Sharecrop-Lien System

306 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: The second reconstruction

The Southern agriculture was reconfigured in the wake of the Reconstruction by sharecropping and the crop-lien system. Sharecropping was a system they used after the Civil War where a landlord allows african americans to work his land in exchange for some of the crop. Sharecroppers were to have half of what they grew if all the conditions were followed, but if they were not, then they would have two-fifths of what they grew. They were not able to work their own land if there was work to be done one their landlord’s land. The sharecropping system existed because the white plantation workers wanted to bring back a system like slavery, where african americans would work for them for very little pay. The cotton agriculture changed because

Show More
Related

  • Land Rights in Australia

    786 Words  | 2 Pages

    This essay is about the land rights of of Australia and how Eddie Marbo was not happy about his land been taken away from him. In May 1982 Eddie Marbo and four other people of the Murray Islands began to take action in the high court of Australia and confirming their land rights. Eddie Marbo was a torres islander who thought that the Australian laws were wrong and who went to fight and try and change them. He was born in 1936 on Mer which is known as Murray Island. The British Crown in the form of the colony of Queensland became of the sovereign of the islands when they were annexed in1978. They claimed continued enjoyment of there land rights and that had not been validly extinguished by the sovereign. (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012)

    Read More

  • Were Black Americans Made Free and Equal by the Abolition of Slavery, 1865-1915?

    677 Words  | 2 Pages

    After the black Americans were freed from their slave masters they did not have ‘a cent in their pockets’ and ‘without a hut to shelter them’ . This obvious lack a home, and the monetary funds needed to support them [the freed slaves] and their families, together with the lack of widespread Government support meant that many slaves continued to live in poverty, and in many ways, they could have been better off (economically), had they been left in bondage . For this reason, many Southern slaves ‘had little choice but to remain as paid labourers or to become sharecroppers working on the land as before’ . Sharecropping, which generally involved the ex-slaves renting land, tools, and a house from a white landlord, working the land that is given to them, and then providing the landlord with one-half to two-thirds of the produce . ‘This system kept the black cotton producers in an inferior position’ , which means that while they were ‘officially free’; they were still stuck in the previous cycle of working for their previous masters, without hope of escape for a better life. While this is what most ex-slaves did, some, like Jourdan Anderson, who left the farm on which he, was prior to being freed, with his family, ‘would rather stay here and starve - and die’ than to have his girls ‘brought to shame by...

    Read More

  • Slavery in America between 1800 and 1860

    724 Words  | 2 Pages

    Within the economy a great development had been achieved when the upper south handed its power to the lower south all due to the rise of an agricultural production. This expansion was led by the excessive growth of cotton in the southern areas. It spread rapidly throughout America and especially in the South. During these times it gave another reason to keep the slavery at its all time high. Many wealthy planters started a ‘business’ by having their slaves work the cotton plantations, which this was one of a few ways slavery was still in full effect. Not only were there wealthy planters, at this time even if you were a small slave-holder you were still making money. While all of this had been put into the works, Americans had approximately 410,000 slaves move from the upper south to the ‘cotton states’. This in turn created a sale of slaves in the economy to boom throughout the Southwest. If there is a question as to ‘why’, then lets break it d...

    Read More

  • Slavery in the Late 1700s and Early 1800s.

    820 Words  | 2 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • How Slavery Affected Colonial America

    998 Words  | 2 Pages

    Also, in the South, it was hard, rough work in the hot sun and very few whites were willing to do the work, therefore, most plantation owners purchased slaves to work the land. The plantation owner gave the slaves shelter and a small food allowance as a salary. Thereby, the plantation owner "saved" his money to invest in more land, which of course required more slaves to continue to yield a larger profit. An economic cycle was created between plantation owner and slave, one that would take generations to end. Slaves were now a necessity on the larger plantations to work the fields.

    Read More

  • Sharecroppers

    1311 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Road to the American Civil War

    1339 Words  | 3 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • The Squatter And The Don Analysis

    1013 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Squatter and the Don was written by María Ruiz de Burton, with the pen name of C.Loyal. Ruiz de Burton was an Mexican-American writer born in 1832, in Baja California. As a writer, María Ruiz de Burton was the first author who write in English. During her writing career, there are few works, of which, The Squatter and the Don is the most famous and the most influential literary piece. As what has been mentioned at the beginning, The Squatter and the Don was published under the pen name of C.Loyal, which was an abbreviation of “Citizen who is Loyal”, and which stands for the political appeal that María Ruiz de Burton advocated toward local government in the nineteenth century. By using this name,

    Read More

  • The American Civil War Was Inevitable

    1627 Words  | 4 Pages

    With the economic system, the south had a very hard time producing their main source “cotton and tobacco”. “Cotton became commercially significant in the 1790’s after the invention of a new cotton gin by Eli Whitney. (PG 314)” Let alone, if they had a hard time producing goods, the gains would be extremely unprofitable. While in the North, “In 1837, John Deere patented a strong, smooth steel plow that sliced through prairie soil so cleanly that farmers called it the “singing plow.” (PG 281).” Deere’s company became the leading source to saving time and energy for farming as it breaks much more ground to plant more crops. As well as mechanical reapers, which then could harvest twelve acres a day can double the corn and wheat. The North was becoming more advanced by the second. Many moved in the cities where they would work in factories, which contributed to the nation’s economic growth because factory workers actually produced twice as much of labor as agricultural workers. Steam engines would be a source of energy and while coal was cutting prices in half actually created more factories, railroads for transportation, and ships which also gave a rise in agricultural productivity.

    Read More

  • Events that Led to the Civil War

    1792 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the south, cotton was becoming a huge success for the southern farmer. Cotton, being a very laborious crop, required the ownership of many slaves per plantation. Unlike the immigrants of the north, slaves were property. Slaves were also much less of a profit. When a slave became ill he could not simply be replaced, he needed to be cared for, after all, this was the plantation owners property. On the other hand in the north if a worker became to ill to work, there were several immigrants waiting for the job.

    Read More

  • Black Blizzards

    1365 Words  | 3 Pages

    During the 1930s many families were encouraged to move into the Southern plains and begin farming. This push for more farming and even new methods of farming came from the government’s efforts to get past the depression, produce more crops, and boost the economy. Farming would help these families...

    Read More

  • Evolution Of Agriculture

    641 Words  | 2 Pages

    In 1870, the total U.S. population was about 38.6 million, with 18.4 million as the farming population. At this time, farmers made up 53% of the total labor force. There were almost 2.7 million farms, each having an average size of 153 acres (Historical Timeline). Also, with the end of slavery brought a new way of farming for the south. This new system was known as “sharecropping”, and replaced the slave plantation system (A Condensed History of American Agriculture 1776–1999).

    Read More

  • The Cotton Gin’s Impact on American Industry and Slavery

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    The invention of the cotton gin made growing cotton practical, and cotton began dominating the growing fields. Cotton was a crop that could be grown almost anywhere because it seemed to need only the land to grow in. Land that was once left empty because of poor growth capabilities was planted in the lucrative crop of cotton. Growing cotton allowed farmers to grow crops in fields that previously had to rest for a season. The southern farmers were able to realize a profit thanks to Eli’s labor and time saving machine.

    Read More

  • The Homestead Act

    1405 Words  | 3 Pages

    The expansion of the United States is such a vital part of American history, yet some often forget how it all happened. Many thriving settlers were given an extraordinary opportunity starting on January 1, 1863 that would end up laying the floor work for many Midwestern and Western citizens today. The rights and responsibilities to live on and maintain 160 acres of land may seem like a lot to take in for a student learning about an Act about land from the 1860s. However, think about all the people the Homestead Act of 1862 affected. There was a lot of pressure on the original homesteaders to make good use of their newfound land, the government was giving out land that wasn’t exactly theirs, and the Native American would have some their rights stolen.

    Read More

  • The Negative Effects Of Corporate Farming In The Grapes Of Wrath

    1378 Words  | 3 Pages

    Whether or not the agricultural business in the US has improved positively within the last century is always a highly debated topic. Not only have farms expanded exponentially, but they have also focused on producing one single product extensively. In modern day society, farming no longer illustrates a regular-sized lot of land surrounded by neatly plowed rows of dirt, along with a wooden-log house, a barn, horse stalls and a pig pen. Farming has transformed into one general implication: mass cultivation. In the novel The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, Steinbeck dissects the transformation of the agricultural industry and the negative effects of corporate farming. Granted that the quality and quantity of cultivation has improved, the impact

    Read More

More about Reconstruction: The Sharecrop-Lien System

Open Document