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Slavery In The Post-Civil War

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Recommended: The social/ economic impact of the civil war

In the post-Civil War South, the economic situation that followed the emancipation of slaves and therefore the loss of the labor force, forced the South to find a suitable replacement for slavery. This also meant enacting laws designed to keep former slaves tied to the land. The economic system, which replaced slavery, was sharecropping. To keep the former slaves tied to the land, however, laws such as the black codes ensured a steady stream of workers to harvest the crops. Furthermore, vagrancy laws, which were designed to punish vagrants by making them harvest crop for a plantation owner, were passed. This paper will analyze three primary sources, “Working on Shares,” the Black Codes of Mississippi, and post-Civil War Rental Contracts. After …show more content…

Looking at the period in which the primary source was written it was a time when “effective emancipation in the cotton South forced a hasty reorganization of the black labor force to secure the harvest.” “Planters…offered money wages or crop shares plus specified rations and garden rights to freedmen for resumption of slave-style work gang employment in the cotton field” The first primary source that are to be examined deals with sharecropping: “Working on Shares” by Henry Blake. This source is a first-hand account of a former slave, Henry Blake about life in the sharecropping system. Once they were freed, they worked on shares and then they rented. He then says that half the shares went to the landowner and your half could be destroyed if you weren’t careful. And if the slave could not count you would lose even if you could count you could still lose. The land owner never gave you a detailed statement of what was owed to you. And you owed whatever the property-owner said you owned you could not dispute it. But if you were a good worker, you could get anything you desired. And if for some reason, you didn’t make any money they would loan you some. They’d always keep you tied to them. Around Christmas time you could take money for food and as much whiskey as you wanted, for the purpose of keeping you enslaved. The landowner had been always right and if there was an argument he would get mad and a slave might …show more content…

“Vagrancy acts were even more extreme efforts to control the mobility of labor” one such act Titled “AN ACT to amend the vagrant laws of the State” section seven this code states that, “Be it further enacted, That if any freedman, free negro, or mulatto shall fail or refuse to pay any tax levied according to the provisions of the sixth section of this act, it shall be prima facie evidence of vagrancy, and it shall be the duty of the sheriff to arrest such freedman, free negro, or mulatto, or such person refusing or neglecting to pay such tax, and proceed at once to hire for the shortest time such delinquent taxpayer to anyone who will pay the said tax, with accruing costs, giving preference to the employer, if there be one”. The Black Codes were written after the ending of the Civil War and Emancipation. The loss of labor that came about because of emancipation meant that there was no one to harvest the crop. This required a new system and new laws to keep former slaves tied to the

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The primarily focus of this paper is to address the studies of the African-American views, conflict, and treatments from the Southern states following The Civil War. Documents include “Black Codes of the State of Mississippi” and the “Address of the Colored Convention to the People of Alabama”. These documents provide shaped rules, laws, and statutes for black society among whites. Between the years of, 1865 and 1867, both Alabama and Mississippi took action and state their thoughts towards the end of slavery in the United States.

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  Although slavery had been outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment, it continued in many southern states. In an effort to get around laws passed by Congress, southern states created black codes, which were discriminatory state laws which aimed to keep white supremacy in place. While the codes granted certain freedoms to African Americans, their primary purpose was to fulfill an important economic need in the postwar South. To maintain agricultural production, the South had relied on slaves to work the land. Black codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their ties to the land.

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Some slaves seeked free states, while others sought to remain by their family’s side, and those that did escape only took what they needed, not anything else if they had much

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Sharecropping becomes a minute step up from slavery when the fact that the workers rarely were paid if at all, that due to their debts, workers never owned their own land so they couldn’t support themselves, and that this practice

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The landowners took advantage of their tenants by overcharging for land and underpaying for the crops. The tenants began falling deeper into debt. They could not leave until they paid off their debt, which was nearly impossible. Although former slaves had been freed, they were still facing many struggles in free life. America’s plan for reconstruction had good intent, but did not give African Americans the equality they deserved.

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The first African American leaders in the South Came from the ranks of antebellum free blacks who were joint by norther blacks to support Reconstruction. Blanche K Bruce an ex slave established a school for freedmen and in 1874 he became Mississippi’s second black U.S. senator. African American speakers who were financed by the Republican Party, spread out into the plantation districts and recruited former slaves to take part in politics. In South Carolina, African Americans constituted a majority in the lower house of legislature in 1868. Over the reconstruction twenty African Americans served in state administrations as Governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, or lesser offices.

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Slaveowners were able to keep every penny that they made from their slave’s labor because they did not have to pay a single penny to their slave. Also, the slaves were considered as their owner’s property, therefore the slaveowners were able to claim their slave’s offspring as slaves too. In the article “Did slavery make economic sense?” an anonymous author quotes Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, and they state, “[slavery is] generally a highly profitable investment which yielded rates of return that compared favourably with the most outstanding investment opportunities in

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Finally, at a late hour, they reach the quarters, sleepy and overcome with the long day's toil. All that is allowed them is corn and bacon, which is given out at the corn-crib and smoke-house every Sunday morning. Each one receives, as his weekly allowance, three and a half pounds of bacon, and corn enough to make a peck of meal. That is all.” This shows how slaves were forced into grueling labor without any proper compensation.

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I have nothing at all–no, not a shirt to my back but two rags.” Another account from a slave named William Henry Singleton, stated a similar experience. He told of his experience when he was sold to a new master. He said that “Of course I had hardly any clothes, but then I did not need many clothes to keep me warm.” Both of these experiences indicate that indentured servants and slaves did not own much.

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“Yes, sir, he gives me enough, such as it is.” The colonel, after ascertaining where the slave belonged, rode on; the man also went on about his business, not dreaming that he had been conversing with his master. He thought, said, and heard nothing more of the matter, until two or three weeks afterwards. The poor man was then informed by his overseer that, for having found fault with his master, he was now to be sold to a Georgia trader. He was immediately chained and handcuffed; and thus, without a moment’s warning, he was snatched away, and forever sundered, from his family and friends, by a hand more unrelenting than death.”

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