Sharecropping In The Civil War

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Around the time of reconstruction since the white in the south lost their slaves a new form of labor sprang up this was called sharecropping. It is stated that the sharecroppers worked with the landowner giving them half the crop in exchange the sharecropper bought goods from the landowner. They were provided clothes, food, and other good this put them in debt to repay it they would promise the landowner more of next years crop. This goes to show one of the many ways the south had won reconstruction but the north won the war. The sharecroppers were usually stuck in one plantation until their debt was repaid. Many people were given 40 acres of land by Union General William T. Sherman the land he gave them was abandoned left in wake of his army. …show more content…
During the reconstruction era black in the rural areas were left without land to live on and since they were good at it that was working on farms and plantations. These were owned by whites who wanted to reestablish gang labor system that was sort of like slavery. Also while doing this trying to reassert white supremacy in the south after the civil war. What the sharecroppers needed to do was plant and harvest their crop and give half plus what they owed to their debt to the landowner. The presence of the north’s troops incorporated the laws in the north to the south and strictly enforced them. An agreement was made to move north troops out of the south and that is when it began to turn for blacks in the south. This is also the agreement that made sharecropping happen in the first place putting blacks back below whites in the south. If the north troops had not been forced to leave via an agreement the act of sharecropping probably never would have happened and all would have been fine for the blacks. This system of sharecropping made a reliance of cotton in the south with there being so much the price for it dropped. Since this system was introduced very few blacks were able to rent or own a land by the end of the 1860s. As well as not letting them rent or own land because of the debts many were struck with poverty and the threat of signing labor contracts not improving their situation at
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