1. Social Adjustment in SC during Reconstruction

2. Plantation Owners Lost Felt betrayed by former slaves who left
labor force
most of their wealth
Felt betrayed by former slaves who left
Entered into sharecropping relationships with former slaves
Used Black Codes to try to hold on to slave-like conditions
Engaged in violence and intimidation against African Americans

3. Small Farmers Not devastated economically by war
Felt threatened by presence of freedmen (competition)
Some joined KKK to intimidate African Americans
Some cooperated with Republicans in hopes of gaining status.
Called “scalawags”.

4. Freedmen Liberated and displaced by Reconstruction
Left after the war to search for sold family members
Many came back to familiar plantations
Freedmen’s Bureau helped them autonomous establish communities
Left white churches and formed their own
Many became sharecroppers, still economically dependent on planters
Crop lien system kept sharecroppers in constant debt

5. Sharecropping

6. Tenancy & the Crop Lien System
Furnishing Merchant
Tenant Farmer
Landowner
Loan tools and seed up to 60% interest to tenant farmer to plant spring crop.
Farmer also secures food, clothing, and other necessities on credit from merchant until the harvest.
Merchant holds “lien” {mortgage} on part of tenant’s future crops as repayment of debt.
Plants crop, harvests in autumn.
Turns over up to ½ of crop to land owner as payment of rent.
Tenant gives remainder of crop to merchant in payment of debt.
Rents land to tenant in exchange for ¼ to ½ of tenant farmer’s future crop.

7. Women
Elite white women had to take on household chores once performed by slaves
Many husbands died or were mentally and physically impaired
Women were forced take on non-traditional roles
Gained some rights during Reconstruction
right to own property and file for divorce.

8. Came to SC as teachers, missionaries, entrepreneurs, or Union soldiers
Northern Immigrants
Came to SC as teachers, missionaries, entrepreneurs, or Union soldiers
Found political and economic opportunity
Resented by southern whites, who called them “carpetbaggers.”