Development: March 2007 Archives

The period directly after the U.S. Civil was a new beginning involving the industrialization of the south. It was in fact a new beginning when in 1862-1863 the U.S. army created the beginning of an economic revolution by offering wages to thousands of former African-American slaves. They were still enslaved. But they moved in status from abject slavery to bonded labor. This step served to stabilize a South that was wrought by economic chaos immediately after the war. By 1864 blacks earned $3-8 per month working eight to ten hours daily. During the same period Edward Philbrick set up an experiment on the Sea Islands off the coast of the Carolinas, where blacks worked at daily assigned "tasks" rather than in slave gangs. He paid them substandard wages, which led to record profits for the plantations, i.e., for himself.