The social and political struggle that followed was short-lived.  There were a few desperate years under the domination of the carpetbagger and the Ku Klux Klan, a period of physical coercion and intimidation.  Within a decade the negro vote was uncast or uncounted, and the grandfather clauses soon completed the political mastery of the former slave owner.  A strict interpretation of the Civil Rights Act denied the application of the equality clause of the Constitution to social equality, and the social as well as the political separation of the two stocks was also accomplished.  “Jim Crow,” cars, separate accommodations in depots and theaters, separate schools, separate churches, attempted segregations in cities—­these are all symbolic of two separate races forcibly united by constitutional amendments.

But the economic struggle continued, for the black man, even if politically emasculated and socially isolated, had somehow to earn a living.  In their first reaction of anger and chagrin, some of the whites here and there made attempts to reduce freedmen to their former servitude, but their efforts were effectually checked by the Fifteenth Amendment.  An ingenious peonage, however, was created by means of the criminal law.  Strict statutes were passed by States on guardianship, vagrancy, and petty crimes.  It was not difficult to bring charges under these statutes, and the heavy penalties attached, together with the wide discretion permitted to judge and jury, made it easy to subject the culprit to virtual serfdom for a term of years.  He would be leased to some contractor, who would pay for his keep and would profit by his toil.  Whatever justification there may have been for these statutes, the convict lease system soon fell into disrepute, and it has been generally abandoned.

It was upon the land that the freedman naturally sought his economic salvation.  He was experienced in cotton growing.  But he had neither acres nor capital.  These he had to find and turn to his own uses ere he could really be economically free.  So he began as a farm laborer, passed through various stages of tenantry, and finally graduated into land ownership.  One finds today examples of every stage of this evolution.[13] There is first the farm laborer, receiving at the end of the year a fixed wage.  He is often supplied with house and garden and usually with food and clothing.  There are many variations of this labor contract.  The “cropper” is barely a step advanced above the laborer, for he, too, furnishes nothing but labor, while the landlord supplies house, tools, live stock, and seed.  His wage, however, is paid not in cash but in a stipulated share of the crop.  From this share he must pay for the supplies received and interest thereon.  This method, however, has proved to be a mutually unsatisfactory arrangement and is usually limited to hard pressed owners of poor land.