Union General William T. Sherman had encouraged this expectation in early 1865 by granting a number of freed men 40 acres each of the abandoned land left in the wake of his army. During Reconstruction, however, the conflict over labor resulted in the sharecropping system, in which black families would rent small plots of land in return for a portion of their crop, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year. The Union Army also donated some of its mules, unneeded for battle purposes, to the former slaves.
During the era of Reconstruction the African Americans did not of gained their freedom. These limitations on the African Americans were unfair for them but the whites thought they were fair. The African Americans did not gain freedom during the era of