Essential Question:How did Reconstruction impact the different
populations of the United States economically, and socially?
The southern elite wanted to quickly reestablish the commercial viability of cotton production and thus retain their social position and regain political domination. As a result of losing their enslaved work force and a lack of cash to hire free workers, Southern planters were forced to find another way to work their land. They entered into sharecropping relationships with freedmen. Because state taxes were raised in order to provide for schools and other public services, some land owners, who were unable to pay the taxes, lost their land. However, the impact of these taxes was exaggerated by those Southerners who opposed the Reconstruction governments. Most landowners continued to own their land and be the social elite of the South. They had economic control over the sharecroppers and they regained political control as a result of the end of Reconstruction.
For poor whites, the Reconstruction period allowed some to have a political voice for the first time. Because they cooperated with the Republican government in the South, they were called ‘scalawags’ by the Southern elite and remained in a position of social inferiority. Some poor whites entered into sharecropping or tenant farming relationships with landowners. Like African-American sharecroppers, they were economically dependent on the land owner for land and credit. These poor farmers needed cash advances on the crop in order to feed their families while they waited for the harvest. Often the harvest did not cover the debt or the farmer needed to borrow again the next year in order to sustain his family. This kept the sharecropper in a condition of constant debt and poverty and restricted his ability to improve his economic situation by either moving or changing crops.
Some Northerners moved to the South during Reconstruction. Southerners accused these Northerners of taking advantage of the South, devastated by the war, and called them “carpetbaggers.” This derisive name suggested that they were opportunists who had packed all of their belongings in a carpetbag and come south to line their own pockets. However, the historical record shows that most of the Northern migrants came as missionaries and entrepreneurs to help educate the freedmen and rebuild the economy of the South.