Post Bellum Southern Economy

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The southern agrarian economy relied largely on free labor for its capital before the Civil War. After the Civil War, restoring agricultural productivity and social stability to the South was an arduous and often unsuccessful process. According to AUTHOR (93) “Characteristic features of the Southern rural economy, well established by 1880, persisted up to the First World War: most black farm operators rented land under share-rent or fixed-rent arrangements, while a smaller but more rapidly growing number acquired titles to farm land.” The abolition of slavery set in motion a clash of expectations between former slaves and former slaveholders, white and black non-slaveholders, and Northern soldiers, missionaries, politicians, and would-be planters. It was typically the diverse and opposing aspirations of different groups that rendered the southern economy inefficient.

The most significant impact on the post-bellum southern economy resulted from the transformation of the plantation. The downfall of plantations did not occur overnight nor uniformly in different regions, but as an economic and social institution it became ineffective nevertheless. Following emancipation, laborers and landowners fought over their respective rights and obligations. Need and federal regulation forced freed people to accept work growing the south’s main crops. Black workers and others worked under different terms and different forms of co

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e south mirrored the nation as a whole, with respect to the way industrial capital and the national government collaborated to transform the economic infrastructure of both the north and south. Some of these changes included tariff hikes, developing western territories, chartering the transcontinental railroad, and setting the foundation for a centralized, national banking system. The pre-war, slave-based economy of the south became a post-war, free-labor economy during the post-bellum period. Many wealthy southerners lost everything as their credit, collateral, and property value equaled the now freed slaves. As AUTHOR (89) notes, “The problem of collateral alone would have strained credit supplies, but, in addition many southern men of money were wiped out financially by the war, and many others suffered heavy losses during the first chaotic year of freedom.” The economy also changed as former labor-lords became landlords. The planters, merchants, corporate owners, and others in the south felt that securing and controlling the labor force was paramount to economic success. The migration of freed workers, however, meant that many employers had to pay more wages or benefits than originally agreed to with other employers
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Approximate Word count = 1383
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

Post Bellum Southern Economy

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