U.S. Elections | Barrow Plantation | African Americans and Crop Lien
U.S. ElectionsThomas Jefferson won the Presidency in 1800 in what has been called a political revolution for the new Republic. The election was the first in which two parties faced one another in a presidential election, and demonstrated that Americans could peacefully change their government through the electoral process. Jefferson, after narrowly defeating John Adams in the electoral college, pledged in his inaugural address to unite the country, "We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists." The two-party system that was born in this election persists until the present.
The election of Thomas Jefferson brought to power a new political party, the Democratic-Republicans. Was this party a national organization, representing the U.S. as a whole, or sectional party, representing only the South? What evidence is there for each position?
Why did a two-party system arise in the election of 1800? What effect did this system have on American political history? Was this a healthy or unhealthy development for American political life?
Write a diary as an observer from France in the United States during the Election of 1800. What are your views of the election? What do you think the election reveals about American political life? Compare America's peaceful transition to Democratic-Republican rule with political life in post-revolutionary France? How do you explain the differences?
Barrow PlantationEmancipation altered the individual and community lives of former slaves. On the Barrow Plantation, the dispersal of housing on the post-emancipation plantation reveals the former slaves' desire to escape the direct control and supervision of their former master. Their construction of a church and a school on the Barrow Plantation after emancipation demonstrates their efforts to build new communal institutions to help forge a new life in freedom.
What changed in the location of housing between 1861 and 1881? Compare and contrast the ability of the white overseer to observe and control the slaves and former slaves.
What new facilities existed for ex-slaves that did not exist for slaves? What new freedoms did these buildings represent for the African-American community? What needs did each fulfill?
Make a table that lists the advantages and the disadvantages of the new system for landowners and slaves.
Did slaves typically own the land they occupied and farmed after emancipation? How might the crop lien system have operated on plantations such as this?
Write a description of this plantation complex by a visitor in 1881 who had also visited the plantation in 1861. What differences and similarities would the visitor notice? Write a detailed description of one of the new dwellings of a former slave and compare it to the slave quarters from the first visit.
African Americans and Crop LienAfter the Civil War, more and more southern farmers became tenants and sharecroppers, both in the black belt and upcountry regions. This development emerged in large part because of a new crop-lien system that transferred land ownership from farmers to merchants. The crop-lien system also shifted southern agriculture even more toward the production of cotton and undermined opportunities for families of small farmers to preserve their economic independence. The map also shows the high prevalence of the crop lien system in cotton growing regions with large slave populations before emancipation.
What areas had the highest concentration of sharecroppers? What crop was grown in this area? Why did sharecropping arise in this area and not in other areas where other crops had been grown before the Civil War?
What did the rise of sharecropping show about the economic development of the South after the Civil war? What economic developments did sharecropping prevent, in agriculture and industry? What racial and economic problems did sharecropping reinforce?
Examine the layers of the map for 1820 and 1860. Did the crop lien system overlap significantly with the antebellum areas of forced labor and intensive agricultural production? Why or why not?
You are an editor at a newspaper that purports to represent the "New South" and tries to encourage economic development for the South. Write an article summarizing the findings of the census of 1880 on sharecropping. What is your position of sharecropping? What steps should be taken to develop those areas of the South most affected by the crop lien system?
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