Final answer:
The freeing of slaves in Louisiana allowed them to gain freedom and pursue basic civil liberties, but they still struggled with economic independence due to systems like the crop-lien. Planters faced labor shortages and economic decline with the end of a slave-based economy.
Step-by-step explanation:
The freeing of slaves in Louisiana had significant repercussions for both former slaves and planters. Slaves gained freedom, a momentous change which empowered them to rebuild families, make contracts, hold property, and move freely for the first time.
For planters, this change led to a labor shortage as they faced a transition from a slave-based economy to one attempting to embrace free labor, despite the complexities involved and the eventual systems such as the convict-lease that sought to preserve bound labor conditions
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Planters experienced economic decline, as they struggled with the shift to a new labor system and the challenges brought on by the end of a slave-based economy which had previously guaranteed them a stable, albeit unethical, supply of labor.
The transition to wage labor was not seamless for the freed individuals either, as they encountered high interest rates under the crop-lien system and continued discrimination, inhibiting true economic independence.
Despite the Union's attempt to organize land sales and lease abandoned lands to investors who would pay the formerly enslaved people to work, for the former slaves, freedom meant more than being wage laborers; it also signified the chance to own land, which in most cases was not possible due to the inequalities that persisted long after slavery was abolished.