A Short History of Reconstruction [Updated Edition]

by Eric Foner

For the region as a whole, the crop lien produced a growing overreliance on cotton and neglect of food, a pattern already clear by the 1870s. “The credit system,” reported a resident of Mississippi, “has been pushed to such an extent that crops have been mortgaged for supplies before they have been planted. The culture of everything but cotton has either been abandoned or greatly curtailed.”