Convict Lease System

It is commonly believed that after the onset of the Civil War, Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation was the key driver to freeing the slaves of the south. After the Civil War, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Constitutional amendments were passed which aided newly freed slaves in being equally treated under the law, or so the story goes. The fact of the matter is that even after the Emancipation Proclamation and after the amendments, slavery in the United States was still “legal” and not only that, but it took on a much different form. The institution of slavery changed from having the direct enslavement of blacks, to the United States legal and prison system enslaving blacks. Yet, the enslavement itself was changed as black convicts were no longer slaves to individual masters, but rather they were enslaved to the companies in which they were leased out to. To create this system there not only had to be the involvement of the Southern judicial system and individual Northern and Southern elites, but also the involvement of the corporation and reinstitution of slavery within a corporate context. This paper will examine our main focus—Was the US convict lease system “slavery” by another name?
The affects of the Civil War were devastating to the Southern economy. Before the war, the South was the richest section of the country. Seventy five percent of American millionaires were Southerners and 24 of the 25 richest counties in the US were in the South. However, this was an economy built on the export of cotton harvested by an enslaved work force, and the Civil War destroyed all of this. First came the drastic drop in exports. Initially the South voluntarily held back cotton, attempting to pressure Europe into intervening on their behalf. As time went by plantations also suffered from a dwindling workforce. Slaves during this time were extremely rebellious (keeping in mind they were legally free). Wherever the Union army went, slaves asserted their freedom.