This January 1866 Labor Contract outlines the terms of the agreement between Anderson Snipes and Washington Wells with regards to labor in the year 1866. The contract is set up so that at the end of the year Washington Wells will receive one-fourth of the profit from the crops that he produces. Anderson Snipes will provide him with the necessary rations for the year.
The sharecropping system was an important framework for the post-Civil War South. The system was not optimal for either the planter or the laborer, but was a compromise that emerged to place the laborer in a subservient position to the planter who retained the land and capital. In many cases the system put recently freed slaves back into a situation where they did not own their labor. However, it was likely that poor whites would also be placed in the sharecropping or labor contract system where they did not own their own labor. The system that continued into the twentieth century.
From Farm and Labor Records, 1 January 1866, Folder 5, in the Whitaker and Snipes Family Papers #770, General Manuscripts, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Janet White
The New South 