"The old South rested on slavery and agriculture, and the new South presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular movement; a social system compact and unitary, the millions of blacks succeeding to the franchise... and a diversified system of agriculture and industry... We have sowed towns and cities in the place of theories, and put business above politics."
— Henry W. Grady, editor of the *Atlanta Constitution*, "The New South" speech, 1886
Which of the following economic developments in the late nineteenth-century South most directly contradicted the assertions made by Grady in the excerpt?
- AThe implementation of strict laissez-faire policies by the federal government that prevented any public support for railway construction in the South.
- BThe formation of the Populist Party, which drew its core support from urban middle-class reformers and factory owners in Southern cities.
- The persistence of a sharecropping system that kept the region predominantly agricultural and trapped many laborers in a cycle of debt.Cevap
- DThe enactment of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which established legal citizenship and voting rights.
Cevap
The persistence of a sharecropping system that kept the region predominantly agricultural and trapped many laborers in a cycle of debt.
The correct answer is the option describing the persistence of the sharecropping system. Although proponents of the 'New South' like Henry Grady envisioned a diversified economy with rapid industrialization and urban growth, the post-Civil War South remained overwhelmingly agrarian. Sharecropping and tenant farming dominated the Southern economy, keeping millions of Black and white farmers tied to the land in a cycle of debt and poverty, which directly contradicted Grady's optimistic claims of a diversified economy and black prosperity.
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Anahtar Kavram
The economic realities of the New South, specifically the sharecropping system and its impact on the region's industrialization goals.