Where Land Was King: The Post Civil War South - Essay Example

Where Land Was King: The Post Civil War South Man's relationship with the land has been told in literature since the days of Moses when he pleaded with the Pharaoh to free his people. In the Southern United States during the 19th century, land ownership became a social division between the elite landowners and the slaves and poor whites. For the antebellum South, cotton was king and land ownership provided the social capital necessary to acquire and maintain economic status. The South's heavy reliance on agriculture, as opposed to industry, as a means to flourish economically during this period depended on the plantation system of landowners and slavery. African-Americans and poor whites living in the South were denied land and the economic stability that it could provide. After the Civil War, the unfulfilled promises of freedom and independence vaporized into a quasi-slavery system of sharecropping and paupers wages instead of the dream of land ownership and true independence. In the agricultural South, any advancement towards freedom, equality, and civil rights would need to be accompanied by the real opportunity to own land. Land was not simply the security of what it could produce. In the South, land was a symbol of unfulfilled dreams, an expression of cultural independence, and a meaningful representation of real social capital. The plantation system of production that proliferated in the South in the 18th and 19th centuries placed land as a currency. Landowners that were able to produce cotton could have lines of credit and assure themselves a steady income. Without land ownership they were nothing. Almost all social status was obtained and measured from the number of acres anyone owned. The adoption of the factor system by the cotton plantations in the South left little for the planters and less for the workers and slaves. Still, planters would be driven to expand and the "impulse to enlarge his undertakings had become deep rooted and was apparently irresistible. There was a sort of atmospheric psychology in the situation that seemed to make a man forever dissatisfied with stagnated sufficiency" (Stone, 1915, p.562-563). In the South, the question of status was not what you did, but rather how many acres you owned. The Ante-bellum South also produced a paradox of ambivalence towards the ownership of land. While it was clearly understood that land was a significant measure of a man's social and material worth, those that were denied its use also decried land ownership. Religious beliefs in the South were initially evolved from a concept of land as a shared resource. Goldsmith (1988, p.392) states, "land, previously treated as a shared resource and mainly immune from individual ownership, became a commodity, accessible to individual enterprise. Traditional agrarian society had been invaded by the forces of a national capitalist economy". As the evolution of land from a survival source to an economic factor progressed, the social structure deprived certain members from ownership. Faulkner in Go Down, Moses describes the paradox of people seeking land, yet understanding the negative consequences of ownership. He writes, ... the land, the fields, and what they represented in terms of cotton ginned and sold, the men and women whom they fed and clothed and even paid a little cash money at Christmas-time in return for the labor which planted and raised and picked and ginned the cotton, the machinery and mules and gear with which they raised it and their cost and upkeep and replacement --- that whole edifice intricate and complex and founded upon injustice and erected by ruthless rapacity and carried on even yet with at times downright savagery not only to the human beings but the valuable animals too (p.221). Without land and its ability to produce and provide, man was nothing. Yet with it man could also become the antithesis of spirituality that was defined by not only Christianity, but also by the African-American forms of worship. The promise of land after the Civil War was a symbolic ideal that African Americans held in their dreams before and during the War. The concept of private property and land ownership was a deeply ingrained cultural value and was a requisite of considering one's self as an American. Land ownership became a key aspect of what was known as the 'American Dream'. Slavery offered no security of income, lifestyle, or even the ability to stay with one's own family. Land ownership could provide a level of security that was a common goal among abolitionists, but was never fully realized. According to Berlin (2001, p.v), "The freedpeople's desire for economic independence, social autonomy, and political power was initially met by a steely opposition from former masters and other white southerners that ranged from determined attempts to reinstate the old regime to sullen acquiescence". The dreams of landownership would not be met in the South. As the plantation system was systematically dismantled, it was replaced by a more deeply entrenched system of sharecropping and low wages. These new systems continued to ban freemen and poor whites from the promise of land ownership. Property rights were a symbol of the success or failure of freedom for the African-Americans and poor whites in the South. While the right to own private property was a deeply held political conviction, it was also a part of the cultural experience in the South. According to Dr. Carey Ford (1998), "Most African-American families with histories in the South can trace their heritage to a farm" (cited in Agriculture an Important Part of Black History). The ability of the land to produce food created a distinct southern culture surrounding cuisine that used the locally grown produce and was influenced by the importation of ethnic foods that immigrants and slaves had brought with them. These traditions and cultural ties could only be maintained by having a close connection to the land and its ability to produce. As the Great Migration progressed, these cultural traditions would follow the Southerners from Africa, through the South, and into the cities of the North (Zeiderman, 2006, p. 220). The connection to the land was so strong, that the migrants would often plant backyard gardens wherever possible. However, Zeiderman, (2006, p.220) states that, "Southern migrants who planted gardens in cities were often discriminated against by whites, as well as by established black residents, who saw them as un-American, unassimilable, or backward country bumpkins". Because newly freed slaves, facing the insecurity of an urbanized world, would cling to their past agricultural traditions is evidence of the high cultural value that they placed on the land. The ability to own land was an aspect of what the land could potentially produce, not what it actually produced. Even a small tract of land could be considered a place to call home and a resource for survival and sustenance. Erskine Caldwell (1933) writes in the novel God's Little Acre that Ty Walden had land that was left untilled, and yet he still used it for his dreams. Rather than growing crops and feeding his family, he was convinced it held a gold mine. Ty would rationalize his actions and say, "I'm aiming to strike that lode out there any day now, but I can't say when it will be" (p.94). The land was keeping Ty's dreams alive and in doing so was offering him hope. Much of the land that ex-slaves and poor whites were able to acquire in the South was marginal for agricultural purposes and often barely tillable. Yet, the owning of the land was the abstract concept that was important. It held social status and social status gave the owner the opportunity to dream. Land ownership in the South has become a contentious subject as it is also seen as a political promise that has gone unfulfilled. Many slaves and abolitionists believed that after the Civil War the plantations would be broken up and the land would be redistributed. However, white landowners and merchants were able to acquire the land and place it in a system of sharecropping. The promise of forty acres and a government mule was a myth that never materialized. Frederick Douglas (1892, p.613) wrote that, "They were sent away empty- handed, without money, without friends and without a foot of land upon which to stand". Without land, the slaves and poor whites were as enslaved after emancipation as before. It was a common lament that, "After freedom, we worked on shares a while. Then we rented. When we worked on shares, we couldn't make nothing, just overalls and something to eat" (Blake, n.d.). Land ownership, not stewardship was the key. Though religion often mandated land as a shared resource and man as merely a caretaker, African-Americans of the post Civil War era often disagreed. In an interview with General Sherman they professed, "The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor...we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare" (qtd in The New York Tribune, 1865). This was the hope of emancipation and the unfulfilled dream that drove the Great Migration north to the factories and the backyard gardens. In conclusion, land ownership in the South has been a symbol of social and political status. Those people that did not own land were subjected to being a slave to it. The agrarian south created a culture that had a natural attachment to the land and to the products it could produce. Still, land had a more abstract appeal for what it might produce as men would dream of finding gold or buried treasure. However, the capitalist system that demands private property rights also abandons many people that are prevented from land ownership due to economics, ethnicity, or class. This unfulfilled promise of land ownership and a piece of the American dream is sought; yet for many it remains elusive. Land is an integral part of the culture on the South from class and economics to food and survival. Land has been an important part of the South for what it produces as well as what it promises to produce tomorrow. References Agriculture an Important Part of Black History, (n.d.), North Carolina A&T State University School of Agriculture, viewed 23 August 2008, < http://www.ncat.edu/soa/news/feb98/farmhistory.html> An Interview Between the Colored Ministers and Church Officers at Savannah with the Secretary of War and Major-Gen Sherman, 1865, The New York Tribune, April 1, 1865, viewed 23 August 2008, < http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/recon/freedmentest.html> Berlin, I. (ed.), 2001, Records of Southern plantations from the emancipation to the Great Migration, University Publications of America, Bethesda MD. Blake, H., (n.d.), ' When We Worked on Shares, We Couldn't Make Nothing', Federal Writer's Project, United States Work Projects Administration; Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, viewed August 23, 2008, < http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6377/> Caldwell, E., 1933, God's little acre, The New American Library, New York. Douglass, F., 1892, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Park Publishing, Hartford CT. Faukner, W., 1994, 'Go down, Moses', in Faulkner, Library Classics, New York Goldsmith, P., 1988, 'Revivalism and the advent of cash economy on the Georgia coast', Review of Religious Research, vol.29, no.4, pp.385-397 Stone, A.H., 1915, 'The factorage system of the Southern states', The American Historical Review, vol.20, no.3, pp.557-563 Zeiderman, A., 2006, ' Ruralizing the city: The Great Migration and environmental rehabilitation in Baltimore, Maryland', Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, vol.13, no.2, pp.209-235 Read More