Using the information from as many sources as possible, write a short paragraph that generalizes what life was like for southerners during Reconstruction.

According to sources such as the government of the United States history page, the life in the Southern states during the Reconstruction period was complicated and had its ups and downs for the southerners. The main problem was the difficulty to design a different labor system that could substitute enslavement. African Americans were used to work in the fields of their owners, and after abolition, they had to start a new form of making a living on their own.