Sharecropping In The Post-Civil War

Labor and agriculture are two important factors that have built the South. Dating back to post-civil war, former slaves became freedmen in the South. With one-third of the population being slaves at the time, free labor was the wealth of the south. This became a large problem to former slave owners as well as the Southern economy. Almost instantly, the states begin passing laws and acts to bind laborers to the land in which they were already working. Southern land owners used the state’s power to enforce superiority over the laborers by enacting acts and laws to bound their workers to the land. Ultimately the freedmen had a breakthrough when they begin to want more independence and “hungered for land” as page 74 describes, allowing the compromise of sharecropping to come into place. …show more content…
The laborers that were allotted land did not have the materials or the funds needed to start their land, so the debt peonage was put in place. Debt peonage was like a loan given from the landowners to the laborer to start their seasonal labor, binding the tenants to stay in their lot until the debt is paid off. Yet another way the landlords had control over the laborers. The debt would be a way to keep the tenants working the land for extended periods of time. This is important because control was an important factor within the Southern labor systems. No matter how the national government had changed the law concerning free labor, landowners would always have to have control over the workers through terror and state