Comparison between Southern Agriculture and Western American Agriculture, Post-US Civil War.

In post-Civil War America, farming grew at a rapid pace. According to Historical Statistics farms grew from roughly 1.5 million farms in 1850 to nearly 5.5 million farms by 1900, according to similar data, the percentage of land area that was consumed by agriculture rose from 15.6% in 1820-38.8% in 1900. This growth also paralleled a shift in agriculture all across America, as post-war America grew in total land area, expanding in all directions. 

Antebellum South was known as the fertile crescent of American agriculture, with the major cash crop, cotton, being of utmost importance. In the wake of the postwar South the entire southern agricultural industry was to see major change. Antebellum southern farmers relied heavily on slave-labor, but following the loss of the war southern farmers saw a tremendous shift in not only the value of cotton, but in the use of labor as well. During the Civil War, according to Sven Beckert in the article “Emancipation and Empire: Reconstructing the Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the Age of the American Civil War” the demand for American cotton fell off by the end of the war. The Civil War forced European nations to look elsewhere for cotton sources, thus growing a worldwide cotton industry that didn’t rely heavily on American sources.

Despite this shift, American farmers, and businessmen in the South still invested heavily in the cotton industry. Erin Mauldin in his article “Freedom, Economic Autonomy, and Ecological Change in the Cotton South, 1865-1880” noted that despite these heavy investments in the industry, the farms failed to flourish, and this was mainly due to poor labor contracts, and ecological changes. Southern farmers at first took advantage of freed slaves, forcing them to work labor contracts that were akin to slavery, but as time went on these freed slaves would walk away from the job, after being worked heavily for little wage. Former slaves were reluctant to partake in “slack-time” labor like farm maintenance, such as digging ditches, rotating fields, controlled burns and other necessary measures to maintain crop production. Southern soil is very acidic and requires constant maintenance that many of these free farmers would do for their owners, while still slaves. This caused a change in the way labor relations were conducted, creating a new labor system known as sharecropping. 

Southern sharecroppers were not only freed slaves, but poor white farmers who could not afford their own land, and could not work for minimal wages. Sharecroppers would work land owned by larger landholders who would give the farmers a cut of the crops harvested. During the year local businessmen would loan the sharecroppers supplies, food and sometimes money that would be paid back when the sharecropper sold their portion of the crops. This was beneficial for both the landowner who would get more willing labor, and the sharecropper who could make their way farming in the south.

At the same time as the shift in southern agriculture, farmers were quickly pushing westward. Railroads quickly made agri-business in the vast west more accessible, and cheaper land was available away from the growing industrial areas of settled America. Emerson Fite’s 1906 article “The Agricultural Development of the West During the Civil War” outlines the rampant growth of western farming during, and after the Civil War. Western states went from producing 120,000,000 in 1849 to 230,000,000 bushels of corn in 1859. This number among other crops grew exponentially. By 1865 the growth in corn production was 25% more than corn production in the west from 1859. This coincided with a rapid growth in farm ownership, which grew from just 7,000 farms in 1850 to 245,000 farms by 1900. While southern farms grew from 515,000 in 1850 to 1.3 million in 1900, the two areas coupled together are representative of the growth of farms throughout the country. 

While there were farmers who had immense success in the west, farming in the region was often treacherous and many farmers who had invested time, and interests in the west were quickly broken by the climate, and the harshness of the region. New research by Richard Edwards, recorded in his article “The New Learning About Homesteading” the greatest opportunity for a western-based “homesteader”-named after the Homestead Act of 1862- was the formation of an agricultural community. The research conducted by Edwards relies heavily on primary source data scourged from thousands of different sources, and these all point the importance of community for success. Community offered several opportunities, as new homesteaders would be offered a greater opportunity to learn from others in the community. Community was an important protection from the arbitrary business interests of larger corporations, and railroads who would often conduct illegal practices to obtain the land of homesteaders

Homesteading, according to Edwards, was tremendous for the growth of western agriculture. Previous historians have postulated that it was land purchases that accounted for most farm expansion, but Edwards has said through new research that ⅔ of all western farms were grown through farmers of the Homestead act. 

The two farming systems of the West, and South represented different challenges, and changes in the years following the Civil War. In the South a change in labor structure was necessary to fix many of the issues, as well as a shift in crop production to move away from the dependence on cotton. In the west, isolation was the biggest hindrance to farm growth, and the formation of community was essential to the success of farmers. 

Bibliography:

Beckert, Sven. “Emancipation and Empire: Reconstructing the Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the Age of the American Civil War.” The American Historical Review 108, no. 5 (December 2004), 1405-1438.

Edwards, Richard. “Invited Essay: The New Learning about Homesteading.” Great Plains Quarterly 38, no.1 (Winter 2018), 1-23.

Fite, Emerso. “The Agricultural Development of the West During the Civil War.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 20, no. 2 (February, 1906), 259-278.

Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970. Washington D.C.: 1975.

Mauldin, Erin. “Freedom, Economic Autonomy, and Ecological Change in the Cotton South, 1865-1880.” The Journal of the Civil War Era 7, no.3 (September, 2017), 401-424.