The 13th Amendment provided an exception where enslavement was ended except for people convicted of crimes. When the Civil War ended, cotton production, for example, exceeded pre-war levels after a brief period.
Cotton was still labor intensive. Enslaved people were replaced by sharecroppers and convicts leased by the states to employers. Because the number of convicts required to do the labor didn’t exist, states generated more convicts by instituting “Pig Laws.” These laws made crimes as minor as stealing a pig worthy of a five-year sentence.