Documenting United States History

296 ChapTER 12 | War and eManCipation | period Five 18 44 –1877 TopIC III | reconstruction^297

Library of Congress

prints and

photographs

d

ivision, LC-USZ62-121735.

pR aCTICIng historical Thinking

Identify: What demographic group does each character in the cartoon represent?

Analyze: Whom do the characters in the image represent, and how does Nast

convey his opinion of them?

Evaluate: In what ways were Reconstruction efforts hindered more by political and

economic conflicts than by social rejection of freed slaves?

document 12.14 Sharecropper contract

1882

Sharecropper contracts, such as this from the Grimes family, used debt to tie poor, land-

less, formerly enslaved African Americans in the South to an agricultural system that kept

them poor and benefited white landowners.

To every one applying to rent land upon shares, the following conditions must be

read, and agreed to. To every 30 and 35 acres, I agree to furnish the team, plow,

for Southern African Americans. In this Thomas Nast cartoon, the caption quotes the

Democratic Platform of 1872.

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