US History After the American Civil War - Assignment Example

US History – After the American Civil War First of To what extent were plantation owners economically, politically, and socially affected by the passing of the thirteenth us amendment?  The 13th amendment of the US Constitution ended slavery and any involuntary servitude. The only exception to this was slavery or servitude as a crime punishment. The Senate passed this amendment on April 8, 1864. The House sanctioned it on January 31, 1865 and adopted it on December 6, 1865. The Secretary of State William H. Seward announced the adoption on December 18, 1865. The 13th amendment was part of the Reconstruction Amendments that followed the American Civil War. The 13th amendment was needed for better functioning of the American society, however, the plantation owners managed their losses through deceitful tactics and kept most part of their autonomy on social, economic and political fronts. Before delving into the discussion of impact of the13th amendment, it is convenient to understand what the term plantation owner meant. Any individual that owned a plantation was known as a planter. The plantation business, especially prior to the Civil War, is essential to understand the US political system. The US was divided between north and south. The north was controlled directly by the Abraham Lincoln administration. The Civil War was between the North and South. The major plantation fields were in the South and a planter would own a property with at least 20 slaves. The area known as the ‘Black Belt’ was situated among the counties of Alabama and Mississippi. Here the terms ‘planter’ and ‘farmer’ were synonymous. On average a slaveholder in the South would own less than 10 slaves, however, the person known as a planter was considered among the elite class and would own hundreds of slaves. The plantation owners kept huge numbers of African American slaves on their farms. The slaves worked for them without any protection of labor laws. This master-slave relationship was brutal for plantation workers and lucrative for owners. The Thirteenth Amendment put an end to slave labor and any form of involuntary slavery. The land owners could not keep the slaves on plantation sites against their will. The passing of law was not welcomed by the plantation owners as it meant loosing huge chunks of profits. The plantation owners put the slaves to grow mainly three crops; cotton, rice and tobacco. The workers plowing these crops were called field slaves. After passing the Thirteenth Amendment, the slaves realized they were free to leave plantation. A lot of them moved to “north”, the remaining slaves were then taken as house servants (Lewis 19). It is natural to expect brewing hate among the African Americans for their owners. On hearing the news about the 13th amendment, many slaves reacted with violence and vengeance. The land owners were now left with huge areas of land but no worker to plow them. They had invested enormous sums of money in buying slaves. Economically they were at a loss. It was not easy to suddenly shift to other means of income. They were good at managing slaves. Even if the slave-master relation was cruel for the slave, the plantation owners suffered losses by the passing of the Thirteenth amendment. It was a blow to their power which was not only confined to the finances. The amendment was a threat to their social status too; owning more slaves was considered a sign of higher status. Plantation owners could not protest politically against the Thirteenth Amendment because they had to take care of their ruined crops. It was loss prevention that kept them at fields and away from the parliament. Transportation was slow, it would take days to travel across states. They had their hands full at the field, fighting a political battle was out of question. The 13th amendment alone brought a significant change in the US, and the events it triggered later on were even more powerful. The amendment ended slavery and set off many civil rights movements across the United States. The 13th amendment did only give physical freedom, it also gave the freedom of thought to the slaves. This was threatening for the social standing of plantation owners and slave owners in general. Not every black person was whipped into slavery, there was the psychological aspect to the slavery too. Many slaves believed that they deserved slavery. It is perverse but they accepted it. But the Thirteenth Amendment proved a breath of fresh air to the oppressed thoughts. From there technical perspective the plantation owners were at a huge loss not only in monitory terms but also politically. They lost their monopoly, dictatorship, and autonomy. They had a submissive force of black workers at their disposal. They had labor for which they were never accountable for. They would literally work them to death. Great productivity meant greater profits. The 13th Amendment was a threat to their luxury. There is another side of the scenario where the 13th amendment was passed but it did not have the impact it should have. For instance after the passing of the amendment there were practically no slaves. No person could legally keep slaves. However, many African-Americans chose to live like slaves because they knew nothing else to do. They had grown up obeying orders; plucking cotton, plowing fields etc. They did not have their own land to use those skills so they reverted back to their previous ‘job’. The news of the freedom did not reach or register to many African-Americans (Anderson et al. 209). Many plantation owners chose not to reveal the truth to their slaves so that they could keep on working like animals (Anderson et al. 209). The truth is that the plantation owners who abused their slaves earned lucrative profits. This was the attempt of the plantation owners at preserving their social, political and economic status. The legal aspect of this scenario needs more scrutiny than it is usually given. For instance prior to the American constitution’s 13th amendment, there were different penal system for whites and blacks. The slaves were trialed and punished according to slavery codes (Adamson 555). The 13th amendment did abolish the slavery, however, the legal treatment for whites and blacks remained different even after the amendment. The episode of slavery and the abuse of labor laws in the history of the United States is very abusive and dark. Everything cannot be understood and analyzed in only black and white, there are many gray areas too. The battle between the Conservatives and Republicans was not only fought in the parliament. The Republicans supported the 13th amendment not because they had sympathy for the blacks it was because they would gain the vote and sympathy of the blacks. It was purely a political maneuver. The impact of the 13th amendment was devastating for some plantation owners as most of them were ruined overnight, they lost everything. Some authors report that the Union troops were the frontrunner of this campaign of looting where they demolished the properties of the plant owners, burnt their houses down, killed their livestock and stole their crop savings (Hall 23). It is a given; there is a victim and a perpetrator, and then there are opportunist who prey on timing. Whenever there is discussion of the 13th amendment the talk of the Civil War is mandatory. There are some authors who are of the mind that the Civil War or even the passing of the 13th amendment did not free the slaves as we would like to think. The freedom was for only those slaves who were able to leave the plantation. The slaves who were crippled or those who had no idea about their future chose to stay at the plantation. It meant that the plantation owners still had almost the same labor force as before. This scenario also tells that freedom was for only those slaves who were completely healthy and had the potential to find work, other than plantation fields. This proves that freedom was a relative term under the 13th Amendment. In this sense the Civil War or the 13th amendment did not free the slaves, it was their ability and willingness to be able to work that freed them (Downs, 2008). The disabled slaves could not leave the plantation in the South, they were enforced to remain under the thumb of the plantation owners. This abuse of slavery continued long after the Civil War ended. The issue at hand is not of passing the 13th amendment or the plantation owners releasing the slaves. The real issue was federal government being able to take care of the freed slaves. It was the plantation owners who had invested so much money into buying slaves and setting up a system for crops and plantation. It was in their financial interest to keep disabled slaves at their plantation sites. They were well aware that the slaves were freed from their slavery, and they won’t be able to find any work outside of the plantation fields. It is helpful to understand the follow-up of the 13th amendment to analyze its impact on plantation owners. The 13th amendment holds its importance but the aftermath and follow up is even more important. For instance the ‘Reconstruction’ under Vice President Johnson, brought back the Black Codes. It was sad to see that the 13th amendment got overrode by it. It also reaffirmed the white supremacy in the South (Ayers et al. 77), meaning that the plantation owners still held considerable power; social, economic and political. The rights of the African Americans such as; the right to get married, owning, renting or leasing a property, working independently, raising crops or the right to reside in towns, was still suppressed (Ayers et al. 77), the blacks were still living a life of slavery. The Reconstruction was crafted in such a way to make the most of the freedmen back to slaves. They were good at plantation. The Reconstruction made sure that the plantation owners keep profiting from their skills. The era of Reconstruction was dark and brutal for the African-Americans and lucrative for the plantation owners. The abuse of rights was brutally reinforced from 1865 till the end of Reconstruction in 1877 (Ayers et al. 77). The method to impose this abusive regulation was illegal, forceful and terrorizing. Racism against the blacks was at its peak and many incidents of violence were reported and observed. Fraudulent method, intimidation and violent tactics were the main tools for the plantation owners that enabled them to regain their power. There is no doubt that throughout the United States there was a superiority complex that made the African-Americans its victims. The Civil War, the approval of the 13th amendment, and black slaves getting away from the plantation sites to embrace freedom, enraged the white community. The white folks reacted violently. It is one thing to hire someone to plow the fields to pluck cotton or pick tobacco and quite another to whip the bareback of a slave into those chores. Productivity was achieved by threatening them with more beating or even the loss of their lives. This aspect is important to understand because the plantation owners could not simply hire white people at the plantation sites. Their productivity was nowhere near the ones they were getting from the slaves. The plantation owners needed the black slaves back on the fields. The period of Reconstruction is important to mention as it strictly follows the passing of the 13th amendment. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and the Vice President Andrew Johnson forced a slight modification to Lincolns plan in which he showed complete disregard for the political rights of the men that were freed as a consequence of the 13th amendment (Olson 16). This was good news for the plantation owners. The 13th amendment directly affected the plantation owners, their profits had dropped and they resorted to violent tactics to keep the crippled slaves at their fields. They needed to keep them there. They used force, threats and circumstantial settings to achieve this. However, they still needed some legal backing and justification for their actions. They needed political influence in the parliament to undo the ‘damage’ done to their finances. Johnson was fully aware of what the plantation owners wanted, and so the Black Codes was introduced. The passing of the 13th amendment created some problems. Over 4 million slaves were legally free now but the state had no plan on how to feed them (Avraham 100). The other problem was regarding the plantation owners. The former confederates deserved punishment. The Confederates were in the South fighting against the Lincoln administration. The plant owners were fighting along with the Confederates. It was Abraham Lincolns plan to free the slaves as it would achieve two goals. One; they will free the slavery ongoing in the United States, two; the black slaves working at the plantation sites would leave the fields and find their own work. This would push the plantation owners to separate from the confederates and go back to the site to take care of the crops (Ellis 10). The plan worked to a certain extent. This was the time to effectively implement the 13th amendment but sadly it was not the case. Abraham Lincoln got assassinated. Vice President Andrew Johnson forced the Reconstruction process that tried to take the matters back to the status they were before the passing of the 13th amendment (Avraham 101). The southern legislatures were designed in such a way that they reinvented slavery. The passing of the 13th amendment is incomplete without discussing the aftermath and the event that were triggered by it. The departure of the freed slaves from the plantation sites to the north was a matter of serious concern for the government. To help take care of this issue the government created the Freedmans Bureau. The Bureau was responsible to assist slaves in helping them to embrace their freedom. It meant that they could earn a livelihood, it was good news for the plantation owners. From a social aspect plantation owners were not as authoritative on the black workers as they were before the 13th amendment. They lost autonomy and ‘master’s’ status. They could not (at least legally) treat the black people like animals anymore. The Freedmans Bureau worked to negotiate contracts between the plantation owners and their former slaves. These slaves were looking forward to moving to the north. A contract for working on the plantation field sounded much better than the slavery for negligible wages and almost no rights. There can be some critique to the 13th amendment for the reason that it did not take care of its true implementation and its aftermath. It did pass a bill that gave freedom to the black people but it made no attempt at taking care of the crippled black slaves who were working at the plantation sites. The freedom meant death from starvation for these people. They had no option but to keep working at the plantation sites. The Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton received a report in 1867, federal agents reported in it that there were freed slaves who were helpless and were left at the plantation sites (Downs 2008), there was no support for them outside the plantations. So, they went back to their master’s old homes. The irony of this perspective is that freedom was tied to labor. A free and healthy black man could fight through the social walls for his freedom, but a crippled black slave was unable to do anything but to go back to the plantation site to be abused, beaten and treated like animals. It is dark sarcasm to analyze the 13th amendment in the sense that freedom was not just the absence of slavery, it was conditional on the ability to work (Downs 2008). The 13th amendment can be understood from another angle where its impact can be seen in terms of the reaction of the plantation owners to the acceptance of the amendment. For instance the owners who accepted the 13th amendment chose to tell the slaves about what the amendment actually meant. They were willing to let them go any time. And there were plantation owners who simply refused to recognize the amendment. There were cases where people did not abide by the law. They refused to give up their property, which included black slaves. The 13th amendment was also dependent on the reaction of the slaves because different slaves reacted differently to their newfound freedom. Some were happy and immediately ran away from the plantation fields in search of new life. There were others who remained loyal to the plantation owners, happy to have a father-son like relationship. For the plantation owners it was good news. There were some slaves who reacted violently upon passing of the 13th amendment, they not only ran away from the plantation fields but on their way they burned down the houses theyve served and their fields (Dornbush 184). The plantation owners who had such slaves suffered devastating losses, not only because of the immediate damage, also because they had no more workers to regrow the crops. Plantation owners kept slaves at field while some white folks only kept them as house servants. The comparison can be understood from a simple demonstration. After passing the 13th amendment many black slaves chose to leave their households. The owners of the slaves did not lose much because the only thing they lost was their original investment in purchasing the slaves. The plantation owners on the other hand lost their livelihood. They were living on the profits they made on the crops. It was for this reason that the plantation owners were mostly concerned with the passing of the 13th amendment. But they had their hands tied, they needed to persuade the power players through backdoor channels in the political battlefield. The Reconstruction phase is one such example. The notorious legislature known as the Black Codes was an attempt to rework the situation back in the favor of the plantation owners. The plan was to return the slaves from the plantation sites back to their owners under different names. The Black Codes contained apprentice laws, vagrancy laws, and other harsh regulations that would give the white folks authority over the black people (Mangum 163). The plantation owners tried to revive their losses through the Black Codes. Despite all their legislative mischief the plantation owners were looking at possible drop in their agricultural profits. When the plantation owner saw that they could not see the slaves on the plantation sites against their will they resorted to technical and legal aspects. For instance contractual treachery, where an African American would be deceived into brutal contract of labor. As it was all legal the plantation owners were not doing anything against the law. Their idea of paying off a debt through work was the vilest thing the plantation owners came up to. The African Americans would enter into exploitative labor contract where they would pay off a debt that they ‘supposedly’ owed to the slave owner with their work. Such arrangements were invented to keep the black labor fueling the sharecropping system, which was another invention of the plantation owners to replace plantation slavery in the South (Smith & Wynn 162). Necessity is the mother of invention; the plantation owners somehow devised ways to cover their losses. Holistically speaking the plantation owners suffered losses but their attempt to rework the situation back can be seen in the passing of the Black Codes legislature. The forced slavery was transformed into contractual slavery. It is easy to understand that the black slaves were illiterate and had no understanding of the legal procedures. They were literally at the mercy of the U.S. Constitution as they had next to none political voice. There can be no absolute answer about the social, economic and political status of plantation owners as an effect of the passing of the 13th amendment for the plantation owners. The resulting effects vary from areas to states. In some parts there was absolutely no change whatsoever by the passing of the 13th amendment. The plantation owners enjoyed the same status in the same lucrative product profits. The state of Mississippi is one such example where no change was observed. The 13th amendment did not have a significant impact on the state as legislative attempts to deny the blacks their freedom continue (Davis 31). From this angle the social economic and political status of the plantation owners remained the same. It gradually expanded giving them more autonomy over the black community. The debate can turn to the possibility had the 13th amendment been followed up with a strict application and enforcement. In that ideal case this would also have included scrutiny and trial of the Confederates, meaning absolute doom for the plantation owners as they were fighting with the troops against the Lincoln administration. This paper is not to criticize the 13th amendment because in spirit it was the perfect thing that the United States needed. The aim of the 13th amendment can also be debated because probably it was Abraham Lincoln’s political move to weaken the southern forces that were fighting against his administration, and not as much as for freeing the black slaves. Whatever the intention might be, ideal implementation would have created distribution of wealth and destruction of slavery. It has been seen in most of the cases that formation of laws and crafting policy is not usually the case. The problem lies somewhere else. The problem arises with the implementation and its enforcement. The scrutiny, the trial and investigations are the second part of passing an amendment or a constitution. The 13th Amendment was incomplete as its implementation and enforcement was not made properly. All in all the plantation owners still enjoyed their monopolistic status. Many owners crafted contract of slavery to replace the plantation slaves. The American nation and especially the African-Americans who were suffering at the hands of abusive slavery are extremely grateful for the passing of the 13th amendment. It is one thing to discredit the 13th amendment because of the Reconstruction at the hands of the Vice President Johnson, and the plantation owners making efforts to make sure that the things go back to the way they were. However it was after almost 100 years that the African-Americans did get their freedom; legally, physically and practically, they earned the status where they enjoyed equal rights with other US citizens (Strickland and Walker 35). The 13th amendment was crucial to ending slavery and changing the face of economic development for the plantation owners. The absolute answer to the state of the plantation owners does not exist. Because some plantation owners suffered devastating losses because of losing their investment. The purpose of bringing slaves from Africa was only to serve in the fields. Other plantation owners went for devious tactics to make sure that 13th amendment does not affect their financial profits. Either they did not tell the slaves about what the 13th amendment actually meant, or they created such circumstances that the slaves had no opportunity outside of the plantation. If one has to give an answer to social economic and political aspect of the 13th amendment, then it did put a crack in the monopoly of the plantation owners in the South. It gave rise to the possibility of freedom for the black slaves. As mentioned in the paper that 13th amendment may not have had uplifted the black slaves and given them absolute freedom that they deserved. However, they did give them the perfect base to start thinking on their own, to regroup and to make themselves stronger. It was this path that led them to the civil rights movement that earned them the freedom they deserved. References Adamson, Christopher R. "Punishment after Slavery: Southern State Penal System 1865-1890." JSTOR. University of California Press, 1983. Web. 14 Mar. 2014. . Anderson, Neil. Mike Quarles and Julia Quarles. One day at a time: the devotional for overcomers. Gospel Light Publications. Ventura. 2000. Print. Avraham, Helene. From Slavery to Freedom: 1492 - 1876. 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Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1940. Print. Olson, Ron. U.S. History (1865-Present): From Reconstruction through the Dawn of the 21st Century. Franklin Lakes, NJ: Career, 2007. Print. Smith, Jessie Carney, and Linda T. Wynn. Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience. Canton, MI: Visible Ink, 2009. Print. Strickland, Brenda, and Pat Terrell. Walker. U.S. History Little Books Famous Events. Westminster, CA: Teacher Created Materials, 2002. Print. Read More