Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the new edition
- Acknowledgments
- A note to the reader
- Chapter 1 What did freedom mean?
- Chapter 2 The legacy of slavery
- Chapter 3 The myth of the prostrate South
- Chapter 4 The demise of the plantation
- Chapter 5 Agricultural reconstruction
- Chapter 6 Financial reconstruction
- Chapter 7 The emergence of the merchants' territorial monopoly
- Chapter 8 The trap of debt peonage
- Chapter 9 The roots of southern poverty
- STATISTICAL APPENDIXES
- DATA APPENDIX
- Epilogue
- A Bibliography of Literature on the South after 1977
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 6 - Financial reconstruction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the new edition
- Acknowledgments
- A note to the reader
- Chapter 1 What did freedom mean?
- Chapter 2 The legacy of slavery
- Chapter 3 The myth of the prostrate South
- Chapter 4 The demise of the plantation
- Chapter 5 Agricultural reconstruction
- Chapter 6 Financial reconstruction
- Chapter 7 The emergence of the merchants' territorial monopoly
- Chapter 8 The trap of debt peonage
- Chapter 9 The roots of southern poverty
- STATISTICAL APPENDIXES
- DATA APPENDIX
- Epilogue
- A Bibliography of Literature on the South after 1977
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The scarcity of capital at the South can only be comprehended by one who has been through the country…. A few hundreds to some, or thousands to others, will make the difference of thousands of bales of cotton and millions of dollars in the result of this season's crop…. There has never been a time when so much general good could be done with so little capital at so small a risk.
Theodore C. Peters, A Report Upon Conditions of the South … (Baltimore: H. A. Robinson, 1867), pp.7–8.The elaborate financial and merchandising network developed to serve the antebellum cotton trade had to be completely rebuilt in the wake of the Civil War. With an institutional change as fundamental as the replacement of the slave plantation with family-operated tenant farms, it was inevitable that these financial institutions would have to be restructured and based upon an entirely new foundation. Unlike the reorganization of agriculture, which was discussed, debated, and deliberated, the evolution of the new financial and marketing institutions took place amid little contemporary notice, let alone debate. Although not as controversial as political reconstruction, or as dramatic as agricultural reconstruction, this financial reconstruction was to have even more far-reaching repercussions. In retrospect, we can see that the changes in this sector had a dominant influence upon the future course of southern agricultural development.
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- One Kind of FreedomThe Economic Consequences of Emancipation, pp. 106 - 125Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001