Question

In 2-3 sentences, explain why most African Americans remained bound to the land after the Civil War.

Answer 1

Answer:

African Americans continued to farm because there were few opportunities other than sharecropping.

Explanation:

Many African Americans remained bound to the land after the Civil War because there were few economic opportunities and most of the skills they had learned were related to farming. There was also the Civil War idea called “forty acres and a mule,” when it was envisioned that blacks would cultivate land that was to be abandoned by whites. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln ordered abandoned Confederate land to be sold to freedmen and agreed to loan army mules. By 1865, 40,000 formerly enslaved persons lived on 400,000 acres of land primarily in South Carolina and Georgia.  During Reconstruction sharecropping became common among the African Americans who stayed where they would rent land from landowners and pay with a percentage of what they harvested.