"I, Solomon Bell (freedman), do hereby contract with Thomas Watson, planter, to labor on his plantation for the year 1867. I am to receive one-third of the cotton and corn produced. The said Watson shall furnish land, seed, and tools. I shall obey all reasonable orders and shall not leave the premises without permission." — Sharecropping contract, Mississippi, 1867
Sharecropping spread across the postwar South most directly because:
- Acheck_circle
Federal land redistribution programs were largely abandoned, leaving freedpeople without capital
- B
Freedpeople collectively rejected wage labor in favor of crop-share arrangements
- C
Northern industrialists invested heavily in tenant farming
- D
The Homestead Act of 1862 provided free Southern land to former slaves
Explanation
Andrew Johnson revoked Sherman's Field Order No. 15, and Congress never enacted broad land redistribution; without land or capital, freedpeople had little choice but to enter share arrangements with former slaveholders.