- When the Civil War ended in 1865, Georgia was in serious trouble.

From the mountains in the northwest all the way to Savannah, the state was scarred.

General Sherman's March had destroyed farms, factories, railroads, and equipment, warehouses were burned, tools were gone.

The banking system had collapsed.

Georgia's economy wasn't just damaged, it was barely surviving.

At the same time hundreds of thousands of formerly enslaved black people were beginning new lives and freedom.

While many white landowners still held large pieces of property, but had no money and no enslaved labor to keep their farms going.

Everyone needed to earn a living, but the state had a lot of problems, not enough money, not enough jobs, and not enough stability.

Out of this crisis grew two agricultural systems that would shape Georgia for decades.

Sharecropping and tenant farming.

(paper rustling) Following the end of the Civil War, jobs that paid well, were hard to find, and most Georgians, black and white had no money for land or tools.

Their confederate money was worthless.

Georgia had plenty of land, but the workers had no cash, and the landowners had no workers.

So landowners created a system where workers didn't need cash up front to buy their own land, home or tools.

Instead, they would run a place to stay and a piece of land from a landowner, then pay back the cost with the share of the crops they grew.

This was known as sharecropping.

Most sharecroppers were the poorest workers in the south.

They own no home, no tools, no animals, and no equipment.

All they had to offer was their own labor.

On paper, this might sound like a fair trade, but in real life, it created a cycle of poverty that was extremely hard to escape and strongly resembled slavery.

Here's how sharecropping worked.

A landowner would provide the sharecropper a place to stay, a small plot of land, seeds, tools, food, and other supplies.

But these expenses were all put on credit, kind of like IOUs.

At harvest time, the sharecropper would have to give the landowner a share of everything they grew, sometimes as much as half.

Then the landowner subtracted the cost of all of the supplies, often with high interest, which increased the total cost.

And because most sharecroppers couldn't read, they couldn't check whether the landowner's numbers were accurate.

As a result, the sharecropper almost always ended up in debt, sometimes even owing more than they made.

This system kept many families trapped year after year, working the same land with no realistic way out of their debt.

The other system was tenant farming.

While a tenant farmer still farmed on land belonging to someone else, they differed from a sharecropper because they had slightly more resources.

A tenant farmer might own a mule, a plow, or basic tools.

Because of that, they usually kept two thirds or three fourths of the crop to sell.

While that sounds like a better deal than sharecropping, there was also a catch.

Tenant farmers still had to buy food and supplies on credit, usually from the landowner store.

Prices were high and credit came with interest just like sharecroppers, tenant farmers often ended up owing money that they didn't have.

So even though tenant farmers had more independents, they were still stuck in a system designed to benefit landowners, not workers.

While sharecropping and tenant farming involve both black and white Georgians, the impact of these systems was not equal.

Formally enslaved African Americans entered these systems in huge numbers.

Racist laws and threats of violence prevented them from buying land or finding better jobs.

Many white workers were poor as well, but the system hit black families, especially hard blocking economic independence and political power.

So what kinds of crops were being grown in Georgia at this time?

Between 1865 and 1872, farmers across the state, including sharecroppers and tenant farmers focused on three main crops, cotton by far the largest corn and wheat.

But because landowners pushed cotton so hard in hopes of regaining the profits they enjoyed before the war, Georgia didn't diversify its agriculture for decades, farmers kept putting most of their energy into cotton.

Even though repeated crop failure showed it wasn't working, it took the devastation of the boll weevil in the early 1900s for farmers to finally begin growing a wider variety of crops.

While rural areas were stuck in this cycle, Georgia cities were experiencing a very different kind of rebuilding.

As trade restrictions ended, store shelves in places like Atlanta, Savannah, Augusta, Macon, and Columbus began to refill with goods from northern factories.

They had just about everything from tools and clothing to household items people hadn't been able to buy during the war.

New retail shops opened many run by Northerners and Jewish merchants.

These stores offered services like tailoring, shoe repair and access to goods on credit, which helped the city residents meet their everyday needs.

Banks also reopened or expanded, giving people places to deposit money, take out loans, and rebuild their businesses.

Cities became centers of new industries as well.

Because the railroads were rebuilt so quickly, Atlanta was able to reestablish itself as an important transportation hub.

This attracted thousands of people looking for work to the city.

Meanwhile, Columbus revived factories that produced textiles, tools, and machinery.

And Savannah restarted its busy port operations, shipping cotton, but also receiving lumber, food products and manufactured goods.

Textile mills where workers turn cotton into thread, cloth and clothing also became an important part of the state's growing industrial economy.

So even though much of Georgia's countryside was struggling with failing cotton crops and limited opportunities, the state cities were slowly expanding their goods, services and industries.

This growth didn't solve all of Georgia's problems, but it did help lay the groundwork for future economic development.

Still life in rural Georgia where most sharecroppers and tenant farmers lived, remained extremely difficult.

These systems continued well into the 1900s, only beginning to fade when several major changes hit at once.

Many black and white rural families left during the great migration in search of better opportunities, the boll weevil destroyed cotton crops and new farm machines reduced the need for human labor.

Even then, these systems didn't fully disappear until the late 20th century.

For decades, sharecropping and tenant farming shaped everyday life in rural Georgia.

These systems weren't designed to rebuild the south, they were designed to keep landowners in control.

Because of that, many rural families, especially black families, stay trapped in poverty with very few chances to move forward.

Even as cities grew and new jobs appeared, the effects of these two systems continue to influence Georgia's economy, culture, and politics.

Learning about this time in history helps us understand that the end of slavery didn't automatically bring fairness or equality.

It also shows why gaining land, education and political power became such an important fight in the years that followed.

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