When the Civil War came to an end, the South was faced with the entire restructuring process of both its social order and its economy. Gone was the institution of slavery, and with it, the lifestyle of the gentlemen plantation owner and the slave(s) under his servitude. Shifting from a system of slavery to that of a free market, from bondage to freedom, proved difficult for both ex-slaves and ex-slave masters. It was a way of life that may have seemed easy, both to establish and live, to Northerners who looked forward to the reconstruction of the South, but it proved difficult to Southerners who knew only their own former way of life who found a way to progress while maintaining a lot of their former traditional within their new society.

After the Civil War, many ex-slaves found that freedom was harder than it seemed. As freemen, the black male population certainly had enfranchisement, and with it, the right to participate in politics, which most were eager for. In an ideal world, this transition would have been easy. The established Freeman’s Bureau was poorly funded and very few people had an interest in maintaining it, though it did help many people.[1] Former slaves saw voting and holding office as a right given to them by the Constitution (the 15th Amendment of 1870), but they had no experience within the political realm. Many of them couldn’t read and didn’t understand politics, but they participated in both black and mixed unions to educate themselves.[2] The political activities of the black population proved difficult to accept for whites who wished to exclude the black population from voicing their political wants. Some white employers even went so far as to threaten the jobs of black employees who chose to vote.[3]

In accordance to the free market system, everyone has the right to work for his or her own benefit. Through hard work a person can be successful and increase their position in life; essentially, a person can go from poor to rich. This was what blacks were told they could do once they were free. Former slaves, however, basically had no skills but those of agricultural work because that was all they had ever done. Though they were now free workers, they ended up doing the same jobs that they had done as slaves. It was hard for blacks to own their own land, only about 4-8% owned their own farms, and many of them ended up sharecroppers for former ex-slave masters.[4] Black women, once so vital to plantation work, now raised families instead of working for wages.

Old self-sufficient plantations were reduced to the level of farms that produced their goods while inhabitants depended on Northern imports of food and other goods to sustain them.[5] Former slave owners met the transition by becoming employers and hiring blacks (and poor whites) for money or for a share of what was produced. They become landlords and investors. But, it wasn’t easy for them, either. They had difficulty adapting to the new way in which they had to relate to their former slaves; they were now employers, not owners. Employers expressed many grievances with their wage workers. They said that they were lazy and unreliable, prone to leaving work and resistant to doing anything besides what was explicitly written in their contracts.[6] By the 1870’s, labor productivity had lowered to about ¼th to 1/3rd its former level.[7]

Both blacks and whites found difficulty in adapting to the new social and economic order of the South. Neither side was aptly prepared for it, either. Transitions proved harder than they may have seemed they would be because neither side had any experience outside of what they knew. It was one thing to tell men that they were free, allowed to work and gain, but without the resources and the knowledge of what to do with freedom, many were left living much as they did when they were slaves, only as wage earners. Employers had to contend with free men resisting the repressive domination of their bosses, who were once repressive owners, and labor productivity decreased drastically. Years of living under the institution of slavery had molded people who had trouble conforming to anything besides their traditional way of life.

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Works Cited

Perman, Michael, ed. Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.

Reconstruction Timeline. A Timeline of Reconstruction: 1865- 1867 [on-line]. Available from http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/recon/chron.htm; internet; accessed April 2006.

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Endnotes

1 Reconstruction Timeline, A Timeline of Reconstruction: 1865- 1867 [on-line]; available from http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/recon/chron.htm; internet; accessed April 2006.

2 Michael Perman, ed., Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), 358.

3 Ibid, 353.

4 Ibid, 361 & 363.

5 Ibid, 367-368.

6 Ibid, 372.

7 Ibid, 359.