e that African Americans were worthy of freedom they were to pick cotton and these profits would go to the government while the laborers were paid, at most, a minimum wage, if any wage at all. Another instance involved a supposed abolitionist and economist who was also a major profiteer in an area of South Carolina called Port Royal. Port Royal was one of a major sea port and had a population of about 8,000 newly freed men and women whose main concern was to obtain land and feed their families. The economist, Philbert, decided he would use these factors to his advantage. He devised a deal with the freedmen that would have them sign a contract which they interpreted to mean that would be own a piece of land. Instead, the contracts they signed meant that now they worked for Philbert and were increasing his wealth instead of their own. Many whites schemed and counted on the African Americans being naïve in order to boost their lost profits. This is the beginning of neo-slavery with regards to sharecropping in the South. While the Reconstruction Era was intending to make the situation for African Americans easier, it never dealt with the notion that the only view Whites held for African Americans was that of servitude. Southerners wanted African Americans to remain in and return to their condition of servitude so they contrived ways to ensure they would always remain in this position.Contrary to popular belief, the reason that Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves was solely for political purposes. (Lincoln) simply could not envisage free Negroes in the United States (DuBois, 82) but he needed to breakdown the Southern economy so that the North would win the Civil War and the southern states would be forced to surrender and return to the Union. Thus the reasoning that the Emancipation Proclamation was an edict that freed the slaves that were in states rebelling against the Union and not the slaves in the loyal border sta...
