USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Debt bondage (also called peonage), is the enslavement of people for unpaid debts and is one of the most common forms of contemporary forced labour.

Detailed explanation-2: -Peonage, also called debt slavery or debt servitude, is a system where an employer compels a worker to pay off a debt with work. Legally, peonage was outlawed by Congress in 1867.

Detailed explanation-3: -With a sharecropping contract, poor farmers were granted access to farm small plots of land. Instead of paying rent in cash, they were required to give a portion of the crop yield, called shares, back to the landowner.

Detailed explanation-4: -After the American Civil War of 1861–1865, peonage developed in the Southern United States. Poor white farmers and formerly enslaved African Americans known as freedmen who could not afford their own land would farm another person’s land, exchanging labor for a share of the crops.

Detailed explanation-5: -Enslaved people had to clear new land, dig ditches, cut and haul wood, slaughter livestock, and make repairs to buildings and tools. In many instances, they worked as mechanics, blacksmiths, drivers, carpenters, and in other skilled trades.