The economy of postbellum Alabama was a unique period of change and recovery. In Alabama, it was an era of redirection, as large plantations and small farmers alike grappled with a land in ruin and a permanently changed labor force. The growth and recovery of the state differed between the northern and southern regions of the state. Inhabitants of the Tennessee Valley of North Alabama in particular, underwent a different experience than their more central and southern counterparts. This included my own Isbell ancestors in Jackson County, and later Colbert County, Alabama. The James Isbell family moved from east Tennessee to Jackson County, Alabama, during the 1820s, and established a large family farm. One of his land patents, and a plat of the county with his land included, are pictured below.
The impact of the Civil War and the Postbellum Era significantly affected all Alabamians, including the Isbells. Following a dramatic dip in cotton production, and the destruction of a large percentage of land during the Civil War, most of the state suffered a decline in its white population. Alabamians moved to states and territories that offered readily available land and agricultural opportunities, such as Texas.[1] Between 1860-1870, the white population in Alabama decreased from 526,271 to 521,384.[2] Of the thirteen children of James Isbell, three of them moved west (two to Arkansas and one to Texas), and one moved closer to the urbanizing areas around Birmingham. Much of the westward migration was spurred by agricultural motivations. Gilbert Fite notes, “Besides having to restore declining production caused by the war, farmers faced the difficult matters of soil erosion, poor markets and transportation, and credit costs.”[3]
The area that proved to be an exception to this rule was the Tennessee Valley in North Alabama. The Alabama Historical Commission notes, “Almost every region of the state experienced a decline in its white population, with the exception of the Tennessee Valley.”[4] This was a perplexing reaction considering that “the northern mountains and the Tennessee Valley were the hardest hit” from devastated fields and property following the war.[5] The statewide population growth percentage was a minute 3% increase between 1860-1870, the lowest percent change of any U.S. census in Alabama.[6] The population growth percentage was created by an increase in the Black population of nearly 38,000 people.[7]
The end of the Civil War brought the new question of whether the South could continue in its agricultural economy, and who would provide the labor. The Freedman’s Bureau encouraged newly freed Blacks to purchase land, but the lack of assets and income often prevented this accomplishment. The emancipated African Americans needed a reliable source of income and housing. Large landowners now lacked a consistent labor force to work their land and harvest their crops. The tenant and sharecropper systems were developed in a large part to solve these problems. Woodson clarifies the distinction between the two systems by noting, “In sharecropping, the laborer works an area of land for the landowner, and is paid with a portion of the crop. In the tenant system, the tenant rented the land from the landowner, and pays his rent to the landowner with a portion of the crop.”[8]
Sharecroppers and tenants were both Black and White, with poor White farmers making up a large percentage of the tenant farmers in Northern Alabama. One immediate cultural implication of this system was the coexistence of both races as laborers on the same farm. However, as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth century, the percentage of white tenants dramatically increased, as black tenants increasingly moved to the urban North.[9] One statewide result of tenant farming and sharecropping was the continuation of large landowners and estates. Rather than whole plantations, however, these estates were broken down into smaller farms that were then rented and worked by tenants or sharecroppers. “According to the Census records of the second half of the nineteenth century, the number of small farms within the state increased,” but “the number of landowners decreased.” [10] This suggests that the number of sharecroppers and tenants increased throughout second half of the nineteenth century. The ratio of land owners to land tenants/sharecroppers was almost 50/50 by the 1880s, and by the 1910 census the latter had surpassed the former by 10%.[11] This was especially true in the Tennessee Valley, which had a much stronger sharecropper/tenant presence than other areas in the state. In North Alabama, mainly the Tennessee Valley region, owners made up less than 30% of the farming population, greatly outnumbered by their laborers. This was in contrast to the more southern regions of the Piney woods or Wiregrass, where the opposite was true.[12]
One unfortunate consequence of the strong sharecropping and tenant population in North Alabama was the stark contrast between classes. Especially within the white population, financial debt and strain were ever-present among the poor farmers. Most sharecroppers used their landowners’ credit to purchase supplies and goods, then owing the landowner for those goods at the end of the crop season. Flyn concludes, “As a result, most tenants had no idea how much debt they had incurred. Owners carried over debts from year to year, meaning that if the tenant stayed on the same land, each year often began in debt.”[13]
[1] “Emigration to Texas,” Mobile Daily Advertiser and Register, Feb. 8, 1867.
[2]
[3] Gilbert Fite, Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865-1980 (Louisville: University of Kentucky, 1984).
[4] Alabama Historical Commission, The History of Agriculture in Alabama: A Historic Concept (Montgomery: State Historic Preservation Office), 19.
[5] Ibid.
[6] 2000 Census of Population and Housing: Population and Housing Unit Counts, PHC-2-1: United States Summary. Washington: U.S. Census Bureau, 2004.
[7] Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, for the United States, Regions, Divisions, and States. (Working Paper Series no. 56). Washington: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division, 2002.
[8] Harold D. Woodman, “Post-Civil War Southern Agriculture and the Law,” Agricultural History, (Jan. 1979: 319-337), p. 322.
[9] Wayne Flyn, Poor But Proud: Alabama's Poor Whites (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989), 60-61.
[10] Ibid., 22
[11] Ibid., 61.
[12]
[13] Wayne Flyn, Poor But Proud, 60.
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