Question

Before the Civil War, the South was the wealthiest region in the country. After the war, it was the poorest, especially the cotton states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina. This poverty would remain characteristic of the region for more than a century. Discuss the reasons why the South fell into poverty and remained there for such a long time.

Answer 1

A large part of the South had been in ruins at the end of the war. It had waged most of the war on its territory. Most of its towns were burnt or destroyed. Many of the railroads were torn down. Most of the fields had only rising weeds inside them.

Anywhere in the South there was no American capital. The people had Confederate money all worthless. The Southern banks could not loan out any money because they didn't have any. To make matters worse, cotton prices fell dramatically on the world market. Much of the world's supply of cotton had been produced in the South prior to the war.

The Black people stopped growing cotton during the last year of the war so England started looking for places in its colonies where cotton could grow. In their colonies the British planted much cotton, particularly in Egypt and India. As a result, the world economy had so much cotton in it. Cotton prices dropped. Everybody in the South got bad. The southern economy was in ruins. During the next eighty years, the world market price for cotton remained low. The South had nothing but cotton so before World War II the South remained poor.

Hundreds of thousands of slaves had fled during the battle. At the end of the war, about half a million Black people lived in refugee camps. Gradually the people returned to their homes, and they closed the refugee camps. The people returned to the rural areas because they didn't know city life.

There was one major issue though. Many landowners hadn't got the money to pay taxes. They have had to sell land to get money. But so many people tried to sell land which became very cheap in the South. These people had very little money for their land so they became very angry at the schools and the governments of Reconstruction.