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The Reconstruction Era

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1865, the end of the civil war. A war that cost the lives of more men than that of all other wars combined, leaving much of the nation with the mess to clean up, in both a literal and figurative sense. All the while, relations between the North and South have crumbled to bits. America lost the unity it stood for in the past. America needed to find a way to be whole again or else the entire country risked falling apart completely. In 1865 to 1877 efforts were made in order to achieve this, a time of reassembly known as the Reconstruction Era came to be, where new amendments were formed and all new challenges for the “United” Stated were being tested. Much of the problems facing former confederate supporters was accepting their loss and allowing …show more content…

Once African Americans were sent off with their freedom, former slaves were left on their own with little more then what they were allowed to take. Due to the racist attitudes that were rampant in the South, it was nearly impossible to find anything but low paying, unskilled jobs for anyone who wasn’t white. Because blacks needed work and plantation owners had vacant land an arrangement was placed in order to meet a questionably mutual benefit, sharecropping. Sharecropping was an agreement between former slave and former slave owners; that in exchange for a share of land and shelter, at a very high rate of interest, the landowner would receive a portion of the harvest made by his land. Although this was a system that functioned for a short time when it was most needed, the high interest rates thrown to the former slaves that suffered from them made the debt nearly impossible to repay, yet again leaving the African Americans under control of the white race. The contracts and rules that were included in these agreements put these newly freed slaves in almost exactly the same situations they had just been liberated from. Typical terms included in these contracts included things like: no conversation between “workers” is to take place during the day, one cannot leave during the day without permission, no raising cattle without permission, and they must be “cheerful” while working (Clark-Pujara

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Convicts that were leased to plantations experienced much of the same conditions they were subjected to during enslavement. “The prisoners ate and slept on the bare ground, without blankets or mattresses, and often without clothes.” They were forced to live in their own filth, bloodied floors and vermin infested quarters. Punishments were usually carried out with lashings, however, they were subjected to “natural punishments” such as exhaustion, pneumonia, heatstroke, dysentery, malaria and frostbite. Convicts were more vulnerable than free workers, and paid a greater price.

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From the outside, sharecropping looked like a perfect solution. Former slaves getting freedom and jobs while plantation owners get workers to work their farms, but this was definitely not the case. It may have looked different and sounded different from slavery, but it was slavery all the same. Sharecropping was a trap for African Americans. This was a system that let former slaves rent land from white land owners, often times renting land from their previous owners.

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After civil was the former slaves were free. While some free men chose to go in search of jobs in the industrial states up north. Most free people in rural areas stayed and looked for work to feed themselves and their families. The sharecropping was one way to acquire work as a free former slave. Landowner started to give their land on credit to the former free man at the beginning of the year.

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With all the laws, taxes and codes that the blacks had to follow, owning land was unrealistic for many. Blacks turned to a cheaper alternative, renting. Unfortunately, this also had its downfalls, such as the lack of white landowners willing to rent to blacks. This led to a system called sharecropping. Sharecropping was an arrangement between white landowners and free blacks, the landowner would provide goods like food and seeds and the blacks would farm and use a portion of their crop as a payment to the landowners.

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Evaluating Cruelty: Sharecropping and Slavery “After the Civil War, former slaves sought jobs, and planters sought laborers. The absence of cash or an independent credit system led to the creation of sharecropping” (Pollard para. 1). Sharecropping is the action of allowing workers, called sharecroppers, to work on someone else’s farm. This let former slaves find jobs; however, farmers found loopholes to exploit the former slaves. Because of this, the workers were rarely paid the amount they needed for their needs.

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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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Sharecropping many freed slaves remained on their plantations and worked as sharecroppers in this arrangement landowners (former

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In the document “A Sharecropping Contract” it begins to talk about all of the guidelines within one of the contracts. The former slaves were unable to get land in the should post civil war so many decided to turn towards sharecropping. “Most ended up as sharecroppers, working on white-owned land for a share of the crop at the end of the growing season.” Sharecropping was seen as a comprise between blacks desire for independence and freedom and whites still containing the control over them. The former slaves would work 10 hour days and at the end of each growing season they had to give 50% of the crop back to the landowners.

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The Reconstruction period lasted from 1865 to 1877. The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendment were created during the twelve years of rebuilding the country. All of the amendments were made to protect former slaves and their rights but on paper they did not have any rights. The reconstruction period had its successes and failures.

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Racism’s Impact on Reconstruction While the issue of slavery evidently contributed to the divide that resulted in the American Civil War, it is debated whether prevailing ideals of racism caused the failure of the era following the war known as Reconstruction. With the abolishment of slavery, many of the southern states had to reassemble the social, economic, and political systems instilled in their societies. The Reconstruction Era was originally led by a radical republican government that pushed to raise taxes, establish coalition governments, and deprive former confederates of superiority they might have once held. However, during this time common views were obtained that the South could recover independently and that African Americans

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The Reconstruction did not happen all at one time. It went through phases, starting out in 1863 with President Lincoln’s Ten-Percent Plan,which kicked off the Presidential Reconstruction phase (Schultz, 2013). This plan stated that if just ten percent of a state’s population would take an oath to support the newly freed slaves, that state would be allowed back into the Union with no repercussions. The Presidential Reconstruction continues until 1867 and included events such as the appointment of Andrew Johnson as president, after the assassination of President Lincoln.

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24 November 2015 The Real Death of Reconstruction There is no easy way to decide who can be held accountable for the end of the Reconstruction Era. Attempts to rebuild the South ceased to exist in 1877, just over ten years after the Confederacy surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox Court House, Virginia. It seemed as though everything was on the right track in 1876, the one hundred year anniversary of The United States. That was, however, until the South waged conflict against black and white citizens of The United States.

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The American civil war led to the reunion of the South and the North. But, its consequences led the Republicans to take the lead of reconstructing what the war had destroyed especially in the South because it contained larger numbers of newly freed slaves. Just after the civil war, America entered into what was called as the reconstruction era. Reconstruction refers to when “the federal government established the terms on which rebellious Southern states would be integrated back into the Union” (Watts 246). As a further matter, it also meant “the process of helping the 4 million freed slaves after the civil war [to] make the transition to freedom” (DeFord and Schwarz 96).

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Sharecropping was a major impact on the African Americans. Different types of sharecropping have been practiced worldwide, but in the rural south, it was typically practiced by former slaves because it was the only opportunity they had. Sharecropping allowed families to rent small land from a landowner who was typically white. They would then give a portion of their crops to the landowner at the end of the year, but would eventually end in debt because they didn’t have enough money for their needs. Africans then had to keep working for the landowner to pay off their debt.

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The switch from indentured servitude to slave labor occurred because the headright system promised to pay an immigrants trip to the new world in exchange for their labor for a set period afterwards receiving freedom dues, land and supplies. However, “the colonial establishment placed restrictions on available lands, creating unrest among newly freed indentured servants” as a result, “servants moved on, forcing a need for costly replacements; slaves” Africans were stripped away from their families and boarded onto ships, in unsanitary conditions they crossed the Atlantic Ocean and those with diseases were thrown overboard. When they arrived in the United States they were sold at auctions and then went to serve their masters from whom they

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