After the Civil War, many white southerners fled the area, leaving land that was then settled by emancipated African Americans. Aided by the Freedmen’s Bureau, the settlers established subsistence farms on the land. President Andrew Johnson, however, after numerous attempts at dismantling the Freedmen’s Bureau, succeeded in removing the African American settlers from their farms and restoring the land to its original owners. With little to no money to purchase their own land, many freedmen returned to working for white planters, sometimes their own former slaveowners. Rather than sign contracts agreeing to gang labor, many freedmen agreed to sharecropping as a compromise. The tenants would raise a cash crop and give the landowners half the proceeds, and in return they were allowed to occupy the land.