One of the most dramatic and far-reaching developments of the postemancipation era was the decline of the plantation system of agriculture and its replacement by tenant farming. The reorganization of the antebellum plantation into smaller tenancies, each operated by a single family, was both swift and thorough. We know that by 1880 the plantation system had ceased to exist. In fact, as early as November 1869 the editor of the Rural Carolinian felt that this transformation was well under way. “That the old plantation system of farming must now be generally abandoned throughout the South is too obvious to require argument. In fact it has, in the main, and as a matter of necessity, been already laid aside.” As sudden and complete as it was, the abandonment of the old system and the fragmentation of farm operation in the Cotton South came about only after an attempt had been made to restore the prewar organization.

The revival of the plantation system

The antebellum plantation system depended upon the use of forced labor, so that the granting of freedom to the slaves undermined the primary economic advantage of this form of agricultural organization.