Week 2 Notes

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School

California State University, Monterey Bay *

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Course

108

Subject

History

Date

Oct 30, 2023

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pdf

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Uploaded by ConstableJay3598

The Barrow Plantation - Two maps that show the effects on rural life in the South - 1860 slaves lived in communal quarters near the owner’s house - Years later former slaves working as sharecropper lived scattered across the plantation and had their own church and school Masters and Free Labor ❖ Masters without slaves ➢ Loss of life affected all classes of southerners ➢ Planter families faced profound changes including poverty and some having to perform physical labor for the first time ➢ Most planters defined black freedom in the narrowest manner ■ Did not think economic autonomy or civil/political equality applied to former slaves ❖ The freed labor vision ➢ The republican north had its own version of freedom ➢ Central was freed balor ➢ If former slaves were free to labor as white, they would be more productive and the southern economy would flourish, leading to a “free society” resembling the North ❖ Lecture Script ➢ There was northern domination because of how butthurt the southerners were after being defeated ➢ Around 260,000 southern white men died in the war, the agricultural property was also destroyed, also halting the southern economy

➢ Plantation owning families had huge changes - had to engage in physical labor for the first time ➢ Tied to put their versions of freedoms on the slaves, trying to gain control over them ➢ Freedom in the view of the planters was a privilege and it did not mean that former slaves had economic, civil, and political equality/independence ➢ Notherener thought freedom meant free labor ➢ Black would become wage workers and landowners ➢ Northern investors would inject capital and migrants into the South to rebuild the economy ➢ The South would be the “free society” like the north ➢ Planters wanted a labor system close to slavery ➢ Former slaves wanted economic autonomy and access to land ➢ The Freedmen's Bureau was supposed to establish a working free labor system ❖ How does control over one’s economic independence feature into competing ideas of freedom during Reconstruction? A Visit from the Old Mistress - Imaginary meeting with a southern white woman and her former slaves - Stance and gaze suggest the tensions from the birth of a new social order - Clear class difference suggested by their clothin - They are on equal footing but there is a space between them The Great Labor Question

- Shows the attitudes of many white southerns - While blacks labor in the fields and idle planter warns a former slave,” My boy, we’ve toiled and taken care of you long enough - now you’ve got to work!” Attempted Land Reform ❖ The Freedmen’s Bureau ➢ Experiment in government social policy ➢ Lasted from 1865 to 1870 ➢ Achievement in education and health care, but not successful in economic relations ❖ The Failure of Land Reform ➢ Idea of free labor was promising, but blacks wanted land of their own, not jobs on plantations ➢ Former slaves and the freedmen's Bureau’s hopes of land distribution were crushed and the vast majority of rural freedpeople remained poor and landless ➢ Many remained in farm work, unskilled labor, and domestic labor ❖ Lecture Script Notes ➢ Freedmen’s Bureau was wan experiment in government social policy

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➢ Agents were supposed to establish schools, give aid to the poor and aged, solve disputes between whites and blacks, ensure equal treatment for former slaves and white Unionists in the courts ➢ It existed from 1865 to 1870, no more than 1,000 agents, accomplishing in education and health care ➢ By 1869, nearly 3,000 schools, serving more than 150,000 pupils in the South reported to the Bureau ➢ Conflicted legacy in economic affairs ➢ Believed that race relations in the South would rest on fair wages and working conditions and on promotions and social advance ■ Freedpeople wanted land, not wage work on plantations ➢ The bureau was allowed ro divided abandoned and confiscated land into 40 acre plots for rental and sale to the freedpeople ■ In 1865 Andre Johnson ordered that the confiscated land in federal hands be returned to former owners ■ In south carolina and Georgia, army troops forcibly evicted blacks who had been given land ➢ There was no land distribution, nearly all rural freedpeople stayed poor and property less during reconstruction ➢ There was little choices and went back to work on plantations for former owners ■ Black men were confined to farm work, unskilled labor, and service jobs ■ Black women were restricted to domestic work as cooks and maids ➢ Wages were to low to build savings or wealth ➢ The failure of the land reform brought a deep sense of betrayal ❖ Why did ownership of land and control of labor become major points of convention between former slaves and whites in the South? The Freedmen’s Bureau ❖ Depicts the Bureau agent as a promoter of racial peace in the violent postwar South