What economic system replaced slavery in the South? the Civil War
How did the end of slavery affect the Southern economy?
Defenders of slavery argued that the sudden end to the slave economy would have had a profound and killing economic impact in the South where reliance on slave labor was the foundation of their economy.
The cotton economy would collapse. The tobacco crop would dry in the fields. Rice would cease being profitable.
How did the economies of the North the West and the South differ?
The North was more industrial while the South was more agricultural
. This difference played out heavily in the US Civil War – while the South was better led, constant shortages of weapons and equipment, along with blockades of ports to prevent supplies from coming in, led ultimately to the South losing the war.
What system replaced the plantation system in the South?
What systems replaced the plantation system in the South?
Sharecropping and tenant farming
.
With a sharecropping contract,
poor farmers were granted access to farm small plots of land
. Instead of paying rent in cash, they were required to give a portion of the crop yield, called shares, back to the landowner.
The system of sharecropping was only a modified alternative for slavery considering the workers would always have debt owed to the landowner and they were not treated much better
. They would rent a small portion of land and then they would give the landowner the majority of the crops.
The Southern economy during during Reconstruction was in very bad shape because of the Civil War
. The war had had many negative effects on the Southern economy. Farms and plantations were in disarray and often ruin. Some had been burned to the ground.
European and colonial American societies considered them property, rather than people.
These enslaved people were part of a capitalist economic system
we call the plantation system, in which they were forced to work, without pay, in terrible conditions, in order to generate profits for people who legally owned them.
The Industrial Revolution and advances and improvements in agriculture were benefiting the British economy. Since profits were the main cause of starting a trade, it has been suggested, a
decline of profits
must have brought about abolition because: The slave trade ceased to be profitable.
Among the other achievements of Reconstruction were the South’s first state-funded public school systems, more equitable taxation legislation, laws against racial discrimination in public transport and accommodations and ambitious economic development programs (including aid to railroads and other enterprises).
The economies of both sides
relied heavily on farming
, and both used similar methods to work the land. Although the North experienced far more industrialization, farming factored just as heavily into its economy as in the South.
The North had an industrial economy, an economy focused on manufacturing, while the South had an agricultural economy, an economy focused on farming
. Slaves worked on Southern plantations to farm crops, and Northerners would buy these crops to produce goods that they could sell.
Different types of sharecropping have been practiced worldwide for centuries, but
in the rural South, it was typically practiced by formerly enslaved people
.
Only after the successive shocks of the persistent drought and severe economic depression did a weakened plantation system finally succumb to the modernizing incentives created by the New Deal in the 1930s. Only then,
after hundreds of years of vigorous life
, did the southern plantation die its final death.
How did sharecropping and tenant farming differ? A.
Sharecroppers received a share of their employer’s crop; tenant farmers rented land and could grow any crops they chose
.
Why did sharecropping emerge, and how did affect freedpeople and the southern economy? Sharecropping emerged
because of reconstruction
. Freedpeople worked as renters and exchanged their labor for the use of land, house, implements and sometimes seed and fertilizer but turned over half their crops to the landlord.
Great Depression and World War II
Other southern industries, such as mining, steel, and ship building, flourished during World War II and set the stage for increased industrialization, urban development, and economic prosperity in southern ports and cities in the
second half of the 20th century
.
How was the economy of the South in the 1850s connected to the culture of slavery?
The building of railroads encouraged enslaved people to do construction work
. The growth of industry in the South diminished the need for enslaved labor. The agricultural economy depended on enslaved labor for its survival.
It
improved commercial opportunities, the construction of towns along both lines, a quicker route to markets for farm products, and other economic and industrial changes
. During the war, Congress also passed several major financial bills that forever altered the American monetary system.
