Missed Connections in Labor Assessment in the Post-Bellam Period of the U.S. following the Civil War

Missed Connections in Labor Assessment in the Post Bellam period in the United States following the Civil War

Nowhere in American history is the statement about history being written by the winners more apparent than in the post-Civil War, Post Bellam period of America’s past. The origin of the statement has been attributed to several men from Churchill to Machiavelli, without ever proving the source. The point to be made is that the post-Civil War in American saw almost no historical perspective from the South for almost a hundred years. And finally, when an evaluation was attempted, it ignored the poor whites who along with the freed slaves were caught up in the sharing cropping method of farming that replaced the other form of slavery. My rationale for writing about sharecropping lies in the fact that my maternal grandparents and their parents before them became sharecroppers to be able to eat and live, along with freed slaves and other displaced, poor, white farmers. Too many historians act as if the post-bellum period simply saw the Civil War end, and slaves freed, and everyone lived happily ever after. A comparison of the studies and data sets after the war indicate the opposite. Thus, the impetus of this comparative review.

Most economic historians agree that two interpretations exist concerning the New South after the war. These are designated as the “liberal” view of race and the “class consciousness” of whites and their refusal to accept blacks on an equal footing.[1] Using Georgia court records and court decisions he looks at the white aggression against blacks owning land, but widely ignores the large number of poor and disenfranchised whites who did not own land and were just as involved in the tenant farming system. Laws were clarified to force black laborers who were found not working to be sold to landowners at a profit and forced to work in the fields, but the same laws were not applied to poor whites, nor were studied made to compare their plight to that of their black counterparts.[2] While Flynn’s data collection follows a very narrow path, it does support the efforts of the Southern planter class to reassert dominance over black sharecroppers and not poor whites.

Joseph Reid’s study compares the different regions of the South to determine the possible reasons why the deep South moved to such drastic measures with its labor force, as the above-mentioned penal system for those determined to be vagrant and who were arrested for not working and leased out to farmers for a profit.[3] Apparently, the post-Bellam Atlantic region pursed a system of education in universities and business practices. Comparing the average earnings of former slaves in Virginia to those in the deeper south indicated a quicker recovery and as Reid asserts, it might have been the result of not having to do a complete reset of their economy since theirs was less dependent on slavery for survival. While the poor whites were again ignored in the assessment, Virginia seems to have had less extremely poor whites, and the damage to infrastructure to the economy was significantly less, especially because of General Sherman’s rampage after the end of the war to punish states like South Carolina and Georgia.

Several attempts have been made to understand the labor problem by looking at the broader picture by comparing the issue in the south to labor issues in other countries following similar wars. Terence Byers in his Capitalism from Above, Capitalism from Below, rejects this means of economic analysis because “it seeks the general at the expense of the particular and the specific.”[4] Various theories from Marx and Engel to other prominent thinkers were attempted, to explain the labor and capital issues of the Old South but few gained tractions as an excepted explanation.

During the post-Bellam years, as Reid confirms with his data, while the North saw folks moving for jobs and new opportunities, the South continued to see a decline in income from farming and yet they remained in agriculture.[5] Major migrations did not happen until 1920. Until then, black and white tenants chose those living conditions and were unable to break free from the new type of slavery in the South.

While most of the studies looked at Black sharecroppers, it would be interesting to see more studies on the poor whites involved in this practice. Later as cotton mills moved to the South for cheap labor, most poor whites moved to mill villages to work in the mills. The economic model was the same with the owner holding the capital, and mill workers paying to live in his house, and purchasing goods from his store. Blacks did not follow them to this new economic model. Blacks were not recruited and to this day, few blacks work in cotton mills. A future study of the reasons might prove interesting.

Bibliography

Byers, Terrance. Capitalism from above, Capitalism from below: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1996.

Reid, Joseph D. "White Land, Black Labor, and Agricultural Stagnation. the Causes and Effects of Sharecropping in the Postbellum South." Explorations in Economic History 16, no. 1(1979): 31, Http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fwhite-land-black-labor-agricultural-stagnation%2Fdocview%2F1305247025%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D12085.

"“Slaves of the State”: Christianity and Convict Labor in the Postbellum South." Religions 11, no. 12 (2020): 651, http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fslaves-state-christianity-convict-labor%2Fdocview%2F2468074166%2Fse-2.

Flynn, Charles L. White Land, Black Labor: Caste and Class in Late Nineteenth-Century Georgia. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1983.

[1] Charles L. Flynn, White Land, Black Labor: Caste and Class in Late Nineteenth-Century Georgia. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1983. [2] "“Slaves of the State”: Christianity and Convict Labor in the Postbellum South." Religions 11, no. 12 (2020): 651, http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2F scholarly-journals%2Fslaves-state-christianity-convict-labor%2Fdocview%2F2468074166%2Fse-2. [3] Joseph Reid. "White Land, Black Labor, and Agricultural Stagnation. the Causes and Effect of Sharecropping in the Postbellum South." Explorations in Economic History 16, no. 1(1979): 31, Http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fwhite-land-black-labor-agricultural-stagnation%2Fdocview%2F1305247025%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D12085. [4] Terrance Byers. Capitalism from above, Capitalism from below: An Essay in Comparative Political Economy. London: Palgrave/McMillan. 1996, 13. [5] Joseph Reid. "White Land, Black Labor, and Agricultural Stagnation. the Causes and Effect of Sharecropping in the Postbellum South." Explorations in Economic History 16, no. 1(1979): 31, Http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fwhite-land-black-labor-agricultural-stagnation%2Fdocview%2F1305247025%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D12085.