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Constitutional
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| Reconstruction
after the Civil War was the process of reorganizing the southern states
into the Union. Throughout the South, livestock had been killed,
as plantations and industries were destroyed. Productivity levels
slowed down, and Southern productivity had depended on slave labor,
which no longer existed.
Without slaves after the war southern landholders reduced the size of their plantations. Landowners had to sell large portions of land. The concept of sharecropping began in the South. A tenant or sharecropper agreed to give the landowner, as rent, a portion of the crop raised from his labor. Sharecropping kept newly freed slaves in debt to landowners. As the northern cities were building industries with the help of immigrants, the southern cities were trying to rebuild their lives. Reconstruction policies were put into place after the war. Southern military leaders could not hold office. Southerners resented "Carpetbaggers" from the north. African-Americans were allowed to hold public offices and had equal rights under the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
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