Productivity and Income Distribution in the Post-Bellum South

Racial discord, political violence, and agrarian unrest are integral to the history of the American South from the close of the Civil War through the end of the nineteenth century. The economy of the region had undergone traumatic changes during the war, not the least of which were the destruction of large amounts of physical capital and the transition of the black agricultural labor force from slavery to freedom. The disruption of production during the war was followed by attempts to reorganize agriculture through a variety of institutional arrangements, including wage labor, cash renting, and widespread use of the sharecropping form of land tenure. Many of the legal and cultural manifestations of the racial prejudice which has long outlived chattel slavery made their appearance during these years. Both contemporary observers and modern historians have recognized possible connections between the economic conditions and the political or institutional developments of the period, yet certain basic characteristics of the post-bellum southern economy have never been adequately determined. Consequently, the influence of economic forces in southern society and political life has remained obscure.