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Introduction
During Reconstruction,
many small white farmers, thrown into poverty by the war, entered into
cotton production, a major change from prewar days when they concentrated
on growing food for their own families.
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Out
of the conflicts on the plantations, new systems of labor slowly emerged
to take the place of slavery. Sharecropping dominated the cotton and tobacco
South, while wage labor was the rule on sugar plantations. Increasingly,
both white and black farmers came to depend on local merchants for credit.
A cycle of debt often ensued, and year by year the promise of economic
independence faded.
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