1. What was the plan to help bring the U.S. economy back after the Civil War? 2. What was the main problem associated with Sharecropping?

After the Civil War, the plan to help bring the U.S. economy back was known as Reconstruction. This period aimed to rebuild the nation, integrate the Southern states back into the Union, address the social and economic status of newly freed slaves, and rebuild the Southern economy that had been devastated by the war.

Reconstruction involved various measures:

1. Thirteenth Amendment: Abolished slavery in the United States.
2. Freedmen's Bureau: Established to provide aid to newly freed slaves by offering food, medical care, education and assistance in finding employment.
3. Civil Rights Legislation: Efforts to grant legal rights and protections to African Americans, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted citizenship and equal protection under the law.
4. Rebuilding the South: Efforts to reconstruct the Southern economy by investing in infrastructure, rebuilding cities and plantations and facilitating the reintegration of the Southern states into the Union.

Regarding sharecropping, the main problem associated with this system was the cycle of poverty and debt it created for many freed African Americans and poor whites in the South. Sharecropping emerged as a labor system after the Civil War, where landowners allowed tenants, often former slaves to use land in exchange for a share of the crops produced.

The key issues with sharecropping were:

1. Debt and Dependency: Sharecroppers often lacked capital and had to borrow money or resources from landowners to start farming. They would often fall into debt due to high interest rates, fees and the inability to break out of the cycle of borrowing against future crops.
2. Lack of Autonomy: Sharecroppers had limited control over their crops often having to follow the landowner's directives on what to plant or how to manage the land, leading to limited economic independence.
3. Economic Exploitation: The division of crops between landowners and sharecroppers was often skewed in favor of the landowners, leaving sharecroppers with minimal profits and sometimes not enough to sustain their families.
4. Cyclical Poverty: The system perpetuated a cycle of poverty, trapping many sharecroppers and their families in economic hardship and dependency on landowners.

While sharecropping provided a means of livelihood for many after the war, it also entrenched a system of economic exploitation and limited opportunity for those involved.