Chapter Five of Rosenthal’s “Accounting for Slavery” made me think deeply about the extent to which emancipation of enslaved people in the United States changed the dynamic between plantation owners and workers. Rosenthal writes “Planters found that their relationship with their workers had suddenly become market relationships. Now they would have to recruit, maintain, and pay workers” (Rosenthal 158). After I first read this sentence, I was hesitant to believe this notion of a seemingly immediate transformation from slavery to recruited workers who are treated with respect. Rosenthal makes it sound a bit too easy. As I continued reading, Rosenthal came back to this idea several times and he used different pieces of evidence to both support this statement and challenge its truthfulness.
There is no doubt that after the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States, there was an immediate transformation. Workers had to be paid, and they could quit their jobs. One piece of evidence Rosenthal uses to demonstrate this is figure 5.1, which shows a chart outlining the productivity on Pleasant Hill Plantation. While these carts normally included the total amounts of cotton picked on the plantation, after Emancipation, they, instead, included days of labor completed by a worker. This wasn’t just the case in regards to the Pleasant Hill Plantation. After Emancipation, there are rarely any instances of plantation owners keeping specific records on the amount of cotton picked by workers. This demonstrates how the degree of control of plantation owners over their workers greatly decreased.
Throughout chapter five, Rosenthal also introduces evidence to refute her claim about “market relationships” between planters and workers. One great example of this is figure 5.3 which shows how plantation owners charged their workers for basic necessities and for absences from work. Plantation owners charged their workers for “shoes, bacon, rice, beef, and taxes” (Rosenthal 163). At the end of the fiscal year, workers were in debt to their bosses on many old Southern plantations. This certainly raises some questions about the reality of “market relationships” between former enslaved people and plantation owners.
The dynamics and relationships between planters and workers in the newly Emancipated South are complex, and undoubtedly, they varied from place to place. It is difficult, if not impossible, to define such a unique time. While it may be true that following Emancipation “market relationships” formed between planters and workers, it is also safe to say that this was not the case in every situation.