Reconstruction

Reconstruction is the name given to the period of American history after the Civil War. It is also known as the "Tragic Era".

Much of the South had to be rebuilt. Railroad lines had been torn up; towns and cities burnt down; plantations destroyed by the fighting. Northern politicians and government officials were sent into the South to organise elections and set up new state governments. Southerners disliked these men because they represented the victorious North. They called them "carpetbaggers" - meant as an insult - because many of them arrived carrying bags made from carpet material. Black men were now allowed to vote and take part in the government of their country. This too was disliked by white Southerners.

Soon black politicians were elected to state and local governments. But most blacks were poor, uneducated and had no political experience either as voters or as politicians. Unfortunately, there was a great deal of corruption. A few mostly Northern businessmen made large profits out of overcharging on contracts to repair war damage. The people who benefited were nearly always white, but black politicians and carpetbaggers took the blame. Perhaps it should be remembered that corruption was quite common in American politics in the North as well as in the South. White Southerners were quick to criticise black politicians because they wanted them to fail.

Reconstruction remains a controversial part of American history. That it failed is clear. Reconstruction stands out as a period of lost opportunity. Southern whites were determined that in spite of their defeat, white supremacy would be restored. Northerners did not want the question of black rights to stand in the way of white Americans, North and South, working together to create a prosperous USA. For their part, the former slaves could see that the full meaning of their freedom had not been achieved.

Sharecroppers

The blacks who had been slaves now had to earn their living. Many of them did not want to work for wages because it kept them under the direction of whites and reminded them of slavery.

Quite quickly a new agricultural system known as sharecropping emerged. Plantation-owners broke up their estates into small parcels of land for sharecropping. In return for seed and equipment, the sharecropper would give the landlord a third or a half of his crop. Life as a sharecropper was very hard and many blacks as well as some whites were trapped by poverty. They could never raise enough cash to buy their own land and equipment. Often they would get into dept with local banks and shopkeepers.

Nigel Smith: Black peoples of the Americas; Oxford University Press, 1992/2000, page 36 - 38