What was happening in the south by the spring of 1865?

The asnwer is in fact A. They made new systems for labor which were tenant farming and sharecropping.

Sharecropping and tangent farming developed to replace slavery in the south by the spring of 1865.

Explanation:

On 9th April 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant and this result in the surrender of whole south region, moreover is was a sign of ending US civil war. Allied officials and enlisted men were allowed to return home to work on their crop farm and to carry their families through the next winter.

During this period, the economic depression affected the south very badly as they had to repairer their building, industry, agriculture land and etc. Slave owners set free their slaves and this result in the loss of the financial loss for them. The world price of cotton had fallen.

The landowners provided poor farmers and free farmers as a way to provide labor for their families and for the landowner to continue laboring to produce crops, and share crops and tenant farming to poor farmers and free farmers started offering.