An American History

THE MEANING OF FREEDOM ★^575

TEXAS

ARKANSAS

LOUISIANA

MISSISSIPPI ALABAMA GEORGIA

FLORIDA

CAROSOUTHLINA

VIRGINIA

TENNESSEE NORTH CAROLINA

Gulf of Mexico

Atlantic

Ocean

0

0

150

150

200 miles

200 kilometers

sharPeecrrcentage of farmsopped (by county)

35–80%

26–34%

20–25%

13–19%0–12%

SHARECROPPING IN THE SOUTH, 1880

By 1880, sharecropping had become the dominant form of agricultural labor in large parts of the
South. The system involved both white and black farmers.

enabled merchants in market centers like Atlanta to trade directly with the North,

bypassing coastal cities that had traditionally monopolized southern commerce.

A new urban middle class of merchants, railroad promoters, and bankers reaped

the benefits of the spread of cotton production in the postwar South.

Thus, Reconstruction brought about profound changes in the lives of

southerners, black and white, rich and poor. In place of the prewar world of

master, slave, and self- sufficient yeoman, the postwar South was peopled by

new social classes— landowning employers, black and white sharecroppers,

cotton- producing white farmers, wage- earning black laborers, and urban entre-

preneurs. Each of these groups turned to Reconstruction politics in an attempt

to shape to its own advantage the aftermath of emancipation.

Aftermath of Slavery

The United States, of course, was not the only society to confront the problem of

the transition from slavery to freedom. Indeed, many parallels exist between the

debates during Reconstruction and struggles that followed slavery in other parts

What visions of freedom did the former slaves and slaveholders pursue in the postwar South?