Sharecropping During The Reconstruction Era

While the Reconstruction after the civil war was multi-faceted, there were three main goals of Reconstruction era. The North wanted to restore the Union to include all of the Southern states so they could become one nation, compromise with the Southern states that ceded before and during the war to give them a reason to come back and reunite, and to help blacks reenter society by giving them a voice and opportunities never before had. While these goals seemed simple enough, different views of how people should be treated and how governments should be run, make compromise a very difficult thing to accomplish.
To restore the Union, President Lincoln began by enforcing the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. Lincoln advised the South …show more content…
Just because they were considered free people did not mean that they were automatically treated equally. The South implemented “Black Codes” that continued to separate the blacks from the whites. In the South, some states allowed blacks to work for white people, but they were still not free to leave without permission. Also in the South, they continued to be segregated by having to use separate modes of transportation, schools, restaurants, and restrooms. After the abolishment of slavery, and to assist the blacks into the newly reconstructed society, the concept of sharecropping was created. Sharecropping was the idea that if a person worked for a land owner, and was given housing, land, tools, and seeds for growing crops by the land owner, then after the crops were harvested, they would get a share of the crops, usually around a third or a half of the harvest. This was because Southerners no longer had money since the war, they only had the land that they owned. This was the only way they had to pay the blacks and was considered free labor. However, the “price” to be paid was usually set by the landowner. While they had the choice to either accept or decline this work, there was very little opportunity for them to do anything else to earn a living. So while they were considered free men and no longer slaves, they were still tied to the white landowners to harvest their crops. This concept was very …show more content…
The purpose of rebuilding and reuniting was to bring equality to all people. Even though laws were passed, they have to be enforced with consequences to be effective. When compromises were made with the South in an attempt to become united, the Union took the South at its word that they would follow the agreements and laws made for all the states. Unfortunately, the Union backed off when the South decided to implement rules to work around the laws that were made for equality. At that time, the North should have gone back to the South to enforce these laws. In not doing so, this empowered the South to continue to treat blacks as unequals. While the Unions agreements were to allow the South the right to create their own Constitution, they were to still have followed the laws for equality. Greed and corruption was a big part of the motivation for Southerners. There was also a deep hatred by some whites towards blacks as they felt they were supreme to the black race. Because of this backslide of unity, we continued to be divided as people for another hundred