The elaborate financial and merchandising network developed to serve the antebellum cotton trade had to be completely rebuilt in the wake of the Civil War. With an institutional change as fundamental as the replacement of the slave plantation with family-operated tenant farms, it was inevitable that these financial institutions would have to be restructured and based upon an entirely new foundation. Unlike the reorganization of agriculture, which was discussed, debated, and deliberated, the evolution of the new financial and marketing institutions took place amid little contemporary notice, let alone debate. Although not as controversial as political reconstruction, or as dramatic as agricultural reconstruction, this financial reconstruction was to have even more far-reaching repercussions. In retrospect, we can see that the changes in this sector had a dominant influence upon the future course of southern agricultural development.