A Short History of Reconstruction [Updated Edition]

by Eric Foner

Blacks quickly became a wage-earning labor force, receiving daily or monthly wages considerably exceeding those elsewhere in the South and enjoying, as well, the traditional right to garden plots on which to raise vegetables and keep poultry and livestock. Yet the system did not end the conflict over labor discipline. Planters complained of a shortage of workers, especially at harvest time, and of blacks demands for higher pay. Many estates lay idle, and production did not regain the level of 1861 until the 1890s.