Sold Down The River Analysis

Mark Hayhurst’s film “Sold Down The River” is an analysis of slavery in the North and South after the Civil War and black emancipation. During the film, many examples are given regarding the ideology of Southern whites after blacks were emancipated. After the decimation of the agriculturally dependent South in the war, the power of the white man was further deconstructed without the workforce of slaves. White men no longer had a cheap and effective labour force to work the fields, and this created significant cultural issues. In an attempt to regain control over the “freedmen”, many tactics were used such as sharecropping, Jim Crow, and lynching. Although these tactics were very successful, this point in American history proves to be a very dark and violent one indeed. After the Civil War of 1861, the South was a beaten people. Despite, reigning victorious over the South, the North ultimately did not have a clear reconstruction plan. Lincoln’s assassination actually had no effect on the grand plan for reconstruction. This was not because his plan did not succeed, but because he had no firm plan whatsoever. Furthermore, Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, also did not have a sturdy plan. In fact, it could be said that Johnson harmed the cause for reconstruction due to the fact that he was a Southerner himself. After the war, for the first time, Southern whites were forced to sit bedside blacks in juries and listen to their speeches. For the white south, this was horrific. They believed that constitutional rights for blacks would spoil good field hands. Because the South’s economy was primarily based in agriculture, with the emancipation of black slaves, the privileged white field owners no longer had the means to tend the fields. Whites had huge problems watching “freedmen” demand a new way of life. Blacks demanded wages, rights, property and ultimately the way of life of white people. On the other hand, Southern whites still expected deference between themselves and blacks. Whites ultimately were used to, and still demanded recognition of authority. In 1866, the Ku Klux Klan was formed with the goal of continuing the Civil War by other means. They were a successful terrorist parliamentary organization with roots in the Democratic Party. They sought to overthrow the reconstruction government, and restore the old white Southern order. In 1875, the only people who enforced the new civil rights act in the South were blacks themselves. Union troops had been taken out of the Southern states. This caused a significant problem: Southern blacks now had no guarantee that their rights would be enforced. Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th US president, was well aware of this fact. Later, Hayes positioned troops to handle the famous railroad strike. Hayes was willing to put resources and troops towards property protection, but not towards defending southern black rights. Conclusively, this situation portrays the growing and unfortunate ideology of the time period. A pressing question during this time period was, who …show more content…
Along with the South, Northerners did not like the idea of land redistribution either. The argument was that if the blacks were given back land in the South, that they would also demand equal treatment in the North. With the oil industry exploitation and expansion, the North eventually began a new relationship with the South: do whatever you please, as long as you permit us to develop industry as well as keeping things quiet for investments to succeed. As these conditions were met, Northern businessmen agreed to disregard the South’s attitude towards blacks. This allowed the South to quietly set its own agenda. The North ultimately surrendered its moral commitment to protect blacks. In turn, power returned to the Southern states, and the White men were back on the path to supremacy. Cotton still had to be picked in the South, and whites wanted it picked as cheaply as possible. The result was Sharecropping. Sharecropping was a workaround of the law to reinforce slave labour. As blacks resisted the perils of sharecropping, the landlords turned to lynching. Prior to reconstruction, slaves were not lynched because they were considered valuable property. Now that blacks were not considered “property”, they were unable to be sold or owned. Because of this, they were openly lynched, tortured, and