Question

Use the passage to answer the question. "…[The] said Cooper Hughs Freedman with his wife…are to work on said farm and to cultivate forty acres in corn and twenty acres in cotton, to assist in putting the fences on said farm in good order and to keep them so and to do all other work on said farm necessary to be done to keep the same in good order and to raise a good crop and to be under the control and directions of said IG Bailey and to receive for their said services one half of the cotton and one third of the corn and fodder raised by them on said farm in said year 1867….And the said IG Bailey party of the first part, agrees and binds himself to furnish necessary Mules and farming implements to cultivate said crop…" —Contract, Marshall County, Mississippi, 1867 What kind of arrangement is agreed to in this contract?

Answer 1

Answer:

This is a Sharecropper’s contract.

Explanation:

After the Civil War, several free slaves created farms on land that had been abandoned by white people (white Southerners). The Democrat President Andrew Johnson, who was a slaveholder, restored every land to the white owners. Thus, former slaves were economically dependent. However, they asked for autonomy and the Sharecropper’s contract was created. It stated that landowners had to divide plantations and create an acre suitable for farming by a family. In exchange for the use of land and supplies, sharecroppers had to give generally 50 % of the crops to the white landlords. Yet, the owners gave credits for sharecroppers to buy goods with very high-interest rates, which gave rise to poverty. This contract, in particular, was made between landowner Isham G. Bailey in Marshall County, Mississippi, and two freedmen in 1867 and it stipulated different arrangements for both families living in the land.