Use the information above and the links provided to complete the following tasks.
Define the terms that are in bold throughout the text. Then answer the following question in paragraph form.
Who do you think benefitted most during Reconstruction? Use information and details from the information
provided to support your response.
Read the following information and visit the links provided. They help to explain the economic impact of
Reconstruction on social classes in the South.
Background
I. Reconstruction had little impact on the South’s recovery from the devastation of the Civil War.
● The South’s economy was still based on agriculture and cotton
II. Southern Planters
● lost their labor source
● felt betrayed
● became hostile to freedmen
● Confederate dollar was worthless, leaving them broke in most cases
● Entered into sharecropping contracts w/freedmen
● Engaged in violence and intimidation against African Americans
II. Sharecropping
● freedmen worked the land just as they would as a slave in exchange for a share of the crop
● landowner supplied the seed, tools and land
● sharecroppers supplied the labor
● when there was not enough crop to make a profit, sharecroppers took out a loan (crop lien) on the
next year’s crop to buy supplies
● crop liens kept sharecroppers indebted to land owners
III. Small Farmers
● non-slave owner pre-war
● had to compete with African American sharecroppers when they sold their crop
● felt anger and resentment
● Engaged in violence and intimidation against African Americans
● “Scalawags” were small farmers who cooperated with Republicans because they benefitted from
the opportunities of the Bureau
IV. Freedmen
● looked for relatives
● most returned to the plantations that were familiar to them to work as sharecroppers
● established a network of churches and institutions
● suffered violence
● struggled to establish citizenship
● increased opportunities for education
V. Women
● Formerly wealthy women had to do the work in their own homes or pay former slaves
● Many women had to take on a male role in the household because their husbands and sons were
either killed or came back wounded from war
● The struggle for women’s rights began
VI. Northern immigrants
● came to the South as teachers, missionaries, and entrepreneurs
● called “Carpetbaggers”