Agriculture Populism And The Rise Of Fusion Summary

610 Words3 Pages
Chapter One: Agriculture, Populism, and The Rise of Fusion When the federal troops were removed in 1870, North Carolina reverted to its prewar identity of a mostly white, Democrat controlled state. The key difference was the lack of slave labor, which forced many into sharecropping and tenant farming and proved to weaken the white cultural domination that had previously ruled the state. With newfound freedom, blacks were able to make slow, but steady inroads. The Fusionist movement of Populists and Republicans in the early 1890s gave Republicans control of the state for the first time in decades. North Carolina and much of the South were economically lagging compared to the rest of the country. Wilmington, however, actually became increasingly