The People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria

Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research

Mentouri University-Constantine

Faculty of Letters and Languages

Department of Foreign Languages/English

The Myth of Equality in Making a New

Status for the Freedmen in the
Reconstruction Period

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

Master degree in

American and British Studies

Supervised by: Ms. Fatima Hamadouche

Submitted by: Miss. Roukia Sekhri

October 2010
 Dedication

To the Memory of my father, Ali,

 Acknowledgments

This dissertation is the result of the inspiring and thought full

guidance and supervision of Ms. Fatima Hamadouche. I wish to express to her

my truthful appreciation for her unrelenting assistance and notably for the time she

devoted to me and my work even in her hard times. Needless to say that thanks to

her care and patience, I was able to complete this work and to learn more through

my research.

I am equally thankful to the examiner of my work who, despite his

tight schedule, was kind enough to evaluate my modest work. His comments are

warmly welcomed.

I am also grateful for the encouragement, help and support of my

closest friend kouther for her love and supports.

There is no word that can convey my honest gratitude to my beloved

mother for her endless support and sacrifice. I also owe a special debt to my elder

brother Hakim, who has always been my model of success and wisdom, and my

source of courage and determination

 Abstract

The present work probes into some of significant events that led to crystallize the

myth of equality through creating a new status for freedmen in America’s

Reconstruction Era (1865- 1877), where slaves obtained their freedom as a result

of former president Abraham Lincoln decision to emancipate southern slaves

through a legal proclamation that was spelled out in January 1st, 1863.That

decision came as an initiative toward the construction and the constructional

amendments of 1865. This work also examines the goals of reconstruction and its

legitimacy, in the developments of the social, political and economic life of

freedmen. It also highlights the whites ‘past-reconstruction situation .in addition to

that, it focuses on the efforts that were made on the part of the states to improve

and raise the status of the black’s minority.

 ‫ﻣﻠﺨﺺ‬

‫اﻟﺪراﺳﺔ اﻟﺘﻲ ﺑﯿﻦ أﯾﺪﯾﻨﺎ ﺗﺴﻠﻂ اﻟﻀﻮء ﻋﻠﻰ اﻷﺣﺪاث اﻟﻤﮭﻤﺔ اﻟﺘﻲ أدت إﻟﻰ ﺗﺒﻠﻮر ﺧﺮاﻓﺔ اﻟﻤﺴﺎواة ﻣﻦ ﺧﻼل ﺧﻠﻖ وﺿﻌﯿﺔ‬

‫ﺟﺪﯾﺪة ﻟﻠﻌﺒﯿﺪ اﻟﻤﺤﺮرﯾﻦ ﺧﻼل و ﺑﻌﺪ اﻟﺤﺮب اﻷھﻠﯿﺔ أي ﻓﻲ ﻣﺮﺣﻠﺔ اﻟﺒﻨﺎء ﺑﺪاء ﻣﻦ ‪ 1863‬إﻟﻰ ‪ , 1877‬ﺣﯿﺚ ﺗﻢ ﺗﺤﺮﯾﺮ‬

‫ﻋﺒﯿﺪ اﻟﺠﻨﻮب ﺑﻨﺎء ﻋﻠﻰ ﻗﺮار ﻣﻦ اﻟﺮﺋﯿﺲ اﻷﻣﺮﯾﻜﻲ ا ﺑﺮاھﻢ ﻟﯿﻨﻜﻮن ﻋﺒﺮ وﺛﯿﻘﺔ رﺳﻤﯿﺔ ﺗﻢ اﻟﻤﺼﺎدﻗﺔ ﻋﻠﯿﮭﺎ ﻓﻲ اﻟﻔﺎﺗﺢ ﻣﻦ ﺷﮭﺮ‬

‫ﺟﺎﻧﻔﻲ ‪ 1863‬و اﻟﺘﻲ أﺗﺖ ﻛﺨﻄﻮة ﺗﻤﮭﺪﯾﮫ ﻟﻠﺘﻌﺪﯾﻞ اﻟﺪﺳﺘﻮري اﻟﺜﺎﻟﺚ ﻋﺸﺮ ﻋﺎم ‪ . 1865‬ﺗﺘﻤﺤﻮر ھﺬه اﻟﺪراﺳﺔ ﺣﻮل أھﺪاف‬

‫ﻣﺮﺣﻠﺔ اﻟﺒﻨﺎء وﻣﺪى ﺷﺮﻋﯿﺘﮭﺎ ﺑﺎﻟﻨﺴﺒﺔ ﻟﻠﻮﻻﯾﺎت اﻟﻤﺘﺤﺪة ﻣﻦ ﺧﻼل ﺗﻄﻮر اﻟﺤﯿﺎة اﻻﺟﺘﻤﺎﻋﯿﺔ‪ ،‬اﻟﺴﯿﺎﺳﯿﺔ‪ ،‬اﻻﻗﺘﺼﺎدﯾﺔ ﻟﻠﻌﺒﯿﺪ‬

‫اﻟﻤﺤﺮرﯾﻦ و ﻣﺪى ﺗﻘﺒﻞ اﻟﺒﯿﺾ ﻟﮭﺬه اﻟﻮﺿﻌﯿﺔ‪.‬ﺑﺈﻻﺿﺎﻓﺔ إﻟﻰ ذﻟﻚ ﻣﺎ ھﻲ اﻹﻣﻜﺎﻧﯿﺔ اﻟﻤﺘﺎﺣﺔ ﻣﻦ ﻃﺮف اﻟﺪوﻟﺔ إﻟﻰ اﻹرﺗﻘﺎء‬

‫ﺑﻮﺿﻌﯿﺔ ھﺬه اﻟﻔﺌﺔ ‪.‬‬

 Table of content
General Introduction………………………………………………………………………...…...1

Chapter One: The War Against the Institution of Slavery

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..…..4

1. Background…………………………………………………………………………..………..4

1.1The Impact of the Civil War on the Changing Course of the Issue of

Slavery…………………………………………………………………………...……….…........4

2. The Coming of Emancipation ………………...…...…………...........................……...........6

2.1The Preliminary Emancipation …………………………………………….............................7

2.2 The Final Emancipation………………………………………………….……......................9

3. The Blacks Serving in the Union …………………………….…..………………………..10

4. The End of the War and the Destruction of Slavery………………..…..……...................13

Conclusion…………………………………………………….……………………..................16

Chapter Two: The Status of the Freedman in the Reconstruction Era

Introduction…………………….………………...……..…………….……....…....................17

1. Social and Political Adjustment……………………………………...……........................18

1.1 The Creation of the Freedmen Bureau..…………………………..………….....……….....18

1.2 Education and Church…………………….…………..…………..……….........................21

13 Voting and Holding Office……….……....……………………….….……...……………..25

2 -Economic Adjustment……………..………………………………….………...….…… 28

2.1 Agriculture as field of interest….........................................................…………. 28

2.2 Industry as a new fashion for the freedmen.…………...………. ….………......................33

Conclusion………………………………………… . .. …………………………..................34

Chapter Three: the Challenges of African American ‘s Reconstruction Era

Introduction…………………………………………..………………………….……...…...36

1. The Unfinished Revolution ……………..…………………………………….................36

2. The Myth of Equality ……..……………………………….……...…………....………..39

3. Difficulties of African Americans in the Reconstruction Era…………........................42

3.1 Violence in the South………………………………………….………..…….…..…...45

Conclusion……………………………………..………….……….…………..….……....49

General Conclusion …………………………………………………………..………......51

Bibliography……………………………...……………………………………..……......54
Introduction:

Starting from 1863 to 1877, The United States of America got on one of the

greatest experiments in social transformation ever attempted in human history. This period,

known as Reconstruction, is often called the second American Revolution, for its far-

reaching effort to fulfill the political and social promise of the first. Started during the Civil

War and ended in the decades that followed, Reconstruction saw the near total, albeit short-

term, transformation of the South’s politics, economy, and society.

Reconstruction involved several elements: reintegration of southern states into the

Union, the punishment of the southerners who had fought in opposition to their country in the

Civil War, and the conflict between congress and the White House for political dominance.

Above all, Reconstruction was the story of African Americans’ struggle for integration into the

main stream of the south and American society as a whole.

This process of integration resulted in a clash of opinions between opponents

and proponents. The proponents tried tiredly to defend and to guarantee the right of the African

Americans through legislation; such as Thirteen, Fourteen, and Fifteen amendments that aimed

to break the color line and make all American whites and blacks equal under the law of the

United States, whereas the opponents, especially the confederate masters, didn’t miss any

opportunity to show and express their hatred toward African Americans. They created violent

organizations, such as the Klu Klux Klan, and racial laws such as the black codes, that worked

for restricting the freedmen’s right which was granted to them by legislation and placed them

again under their control.

To facilitate the aims of that period, the reconstruction plans contained a

conflicting goal in order to rise up the status of the freedmen. The freedmen status was

considered among the major goals that the federal government had to deal with, at that time,

1
throughout achieving economic independence, securing the physical protection from abuse and

terror by local whites, obtaining equal right under the law, and commencing political

participations through vote.

The most significant changes that took place at that period were the

transformation of slaves into free laborers and citizens; this was the most dramatic example of

the social and political changes or reconstruction, unleashed by the Civil War and emancipation

after three hundred years of eagerness to freedom and relief from the bondage of servitude. Thus,

the reconstruction period is the time where African Americans begun to plant the seeds of their

unfinished struggle and not to harvest the fruit; it was the beginning of revolution, and not the

end, especially with the uncompleted freedom based on absence of equality.

This work attempts to answer the following question; what is meant by

freedom without equality, and is the freed man really free?

This research aims to investigate into the status of the freedmen during the

reconstruction era and to explore the extent to which the status of the freedmen had changed.

Moreover, it probes the American policy of freedom without equality and the reason of its

postponement to an unknown date.

The Work is an analytical study which relies on several bibliographical

references, archives and academic publications. Here then, I used some books such as

Reconstruction, American Unfinished Revolutions , The Pelican History Of The United States

Of America and articles such as: “Law Creating the Freedmen Bureau: march 31, 1865” to reach

a clear answer to the problematic.

The course of this study includes three interrelated chapters exposing the events

in a chronological order .I used a historical approach because its fits in the nature of the work:

the first chapter is a historical background on the role of the Civil War to reach a radical change

2
in the status of the freedmen; from slavery to freedom. The war resulted into an important

document, the Emancipation Proclamation, that was considered the keystone of civil rights in the

U.S. constitution, and the first steps of justice and freedom .The war also gave birth to a series

of three amendments, Thirteen, Fourteen, and Fifteen amendments that are of an extreme

importance to African American’s equal status in a widely stratified society. The aim to study

this aspect is to know how these features helped to shape Reconstruction policies toward African

Americans.

Then, the second chapter tackles Reconstruction policies and the efforts to

improve the status of the freedmen in the Reconstruction period on the basis of these questions:

What should be the place of blacks politically and socially in the South and America at large?

What was the effort that had been made to build the new black community?, and did the system

that substituted slave plantation in the south have noteworthy effects on economy?

Finally, the third chapter studies the result of Reconstruction; to what extent

did Reconstruction change the status of the freedmen and did the freedmen really enjoy their

freedom? This chapter deals with the challenges that faced the freedmen and the abolishers

during the process of Reconstruction to achieve the whole goals of making the myth of equality

real. It also portrays the role of violence at that period

In conclusion, the overriding goal of this research is to reveal the fact behind

freeing the slaves after three hundred years of servitude in a war of five years. In order to

improve the status of freed men, American white decision makers simply followed the policy of

“freedom equals equality” in order to give a gloomy hope to a nation whose people lived in

bondage from the very first step on the continent.

3
Chapter one:

The War Against the Institution of Slavery

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to

save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I

would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all slaves I would do it; and if I

could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to

save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I don't believe it would

help to save the Union. (President A. Lincoln, August 22, 1862).

Introduction:

Slavery Saga was the darkest point r in the U.S history and human history at

large. Slavery was an unfavorable project that was documented in the United States’

Constitution wherein slaves were counted as three fifths of a person for representation in

the U.S. House of Representatives, and for direct taxation. However, by the end of the

19thcentury, when the Civil War took place (1860 - 1865), the issue of slavery transformed

from being an accepted behaviour to be a forbidden sin. The Civil War started by removing

all the chains of southern slaves and ended with liberation of all the United States’ slaves.

1. Background

1.1 The Impact of the Civil War on the Issue of Slavery

The Civil War was a time of a change in the chapter of African American’s

history, in which, more than four millions of blacks were freed from the chains of slavery after a

long endurance in the twilight of bondage and servitude. It had begun as a fight over whether one

4
nation or two would succeed in coexisting in the United States territory. Originally, the

American President Abraham Lincoln and thousands of northern leaders acknowledged that the

main cause of the war was not the existence of slavery, but was for safeguarding the union.

Brogan Huge, In his book The Pelican History Of The United States Of America ,quoted that in

August 1862, President Lincoln said: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union,

and is not either to save or to destroy slavery” (326).

Yet, when the union failed to defeat the confederacy of the eleven states, the

demand rose not only for the fresh sources but for manpower. These facts pushed President

Lincoln to admit that the war is a fight over slavery. Thus, as slavery was considered as the cause

of war, the only solution was to destroy it. Slavery had caused a great rebellion; it has poisoned

the political life for more than thirty years. And he assured that the only way to get rid of this

disobedience is to put an end to it (Brogan, 337).

Much like the president, African Americans believed that the war is their

golden opportunity to get their long waited freedom. That freedom would be guaranteed by the

end of the war. This idea became visible in the words of one of African American’s prominent

abolitionist Frederick Douglass who said: “Who would be free themselves must strike the

blow....I urge you to fly to arms and smite death the power that would bury the Government and

your liberty in the same hopeless grave. This is your golden opportunity” (Frederick Douglass,

1863).

In March 1863, in his paper Douglass’ Monthly, Frederick Douglass issued a call to

arms for colored men. He argued that the time demanded is not discussion but action, and that

the Civil War had become as much the black man’s war as the white man’s. Using his powerful

rhetorical skills, Douglass pushed the free blacks to enlist in the Union Army and to fight for the

5
liberation of their enslaved brothers and sisters in appeal to the names of such memorable

antislavery (Douglass’ Monthly, March 1863, 1).

Throughout the war, the president set a plan with different goals. These goals

had an overlapping segment; the first goal was that the president had to find the means of

triumph to convince his supporters that victory was more valuable than it price. The second goal

was that he had to achieve harmony and peace. According to this plan, president Lincoln had

issued the Preliminary Emancipation proclamation in which he had been mediating such steps

for months in his assaults on slavery (Brogan, 347).

2. The Coming of the Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation finally was given birth after several months of

thought and designing. It added a page of redemption to the chapter of the Africans American’s

history which aimed to destroy the chattel of slavery which followed them from a century to

another. Eric Foner, in his famous book , Reconstruction, American Unfinished Revolutions ,

expresses the importance of this document to African Americans by saying that the

Emancipation Proclamation meant more than culminated decades of struggle .It evoked a

Christian vision of resurrection and redemption of unbounded era of the nation of progress .For

them Emancipation meant more than the end of the labor system , more than the uncompensated

liquidation of the nation’s largest concentration of private property (2).

By and large, with the coming of the Emancipation Proclamation, black and

white abolitionists reached what they wanted from the beginning. President Lincoln and

American policy makers thought that by the end of slavery, which is considered as the central

issue of the war, the war will inevitably end. He imagined that when the southerners heard about

the threat of the emancipation, they will certainly put their arms and return to the union. Heather

6
Freund, in his work The War for Freedom, point ed out that having the status of president,

Lincoln’s authority extended to the proclamation because he regarded it as the only way to

safeguard the union or speed up the end of the Civil War . Also he added that for a better

solution, President Lincoln determined that it is time to free the slaves in order to protect the

union. The plan was well under way in which he has issued two different versions of the

emancipation proclamation, the preliminary, and the final Emancipation (119).

2.1 The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation

President Abraham Lincoln was optimistic with his plan seeking to hold the

political middle ground. He was searching for a formula that would initiate the emancipation

process but would not alienate or be set against the conservatives and southern unionists. John

Hope Franklin wrote in his well known book, From Slavery to Freedom, that President Lincoln

wanted to achieve emancipation by compensating the owners for the loss of their human

property; but he found no taker. In addition to that, he was looking for the colonization of freed

slaves in some parts of the world. He encouraged the emigration of the freed man to other places

such as Haiti and Liberia (189).

However, this plan found little support especially from the abolitionists, who

believed that the southern slave possessors do not have the right to be paid for something not

theirs from the beginning. John Hope Franklin assert that president Lincoln met with an

assembly of black leaders in the district of Colombia in an attempt to convince them that race

should be physically separated with the emigration of blacks to Central America (189).

Gradually, the war reduced slavery in the southern states because it made it

possible for the slaves to escape since their masters were out of the conflict. Heather Freund

pointed out that slaves headed by thousands to the union lines as the union army occupied the

7
territory of the confederacy. These circumstances left the frontier states in a dilemma of

emancipating or watching their slaves more closely (123).

After the bloody union victory in the battle of Antietam, Maryland, the

Preliminary Emancipation proclamation released but it functioned only after January, 1863. Eric

Foner said that the president Lincoln declared that: “Where shall be in the rebellion against in the

United States, shall be then, forward and forever” (190). Maldwyn also stated in his work, the

limits of Liberty, that the emancipation did not operate in the four union slave states of the north

or in those parts of the confederates occupied by the union troops (228).

The responses toward the emancipation proclamation were different. Northern

democrats charged the Emancipation as unconstitutional and that it was designed to extend the

war, equally as some whites were doubtful for the real reason behind entering the war. Maldwyn

assert think that this decision of emancipating the slaves was followed by violent reactions such

as the New York Draft riots of July18461 (229). In the other side, African Americans were glad

for the first steps of justice, especially the abolitionists who welcomed the emancipations as a

beginning of change. These reactions led to the creation of the second or the finial provision

(Franklin, 190).

To sum up, the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation played an important

role in paving the way for reaching real changes at that unchangeable period. For African

Americans, It glowed a candle beyond the darkness of slavery and gave hope of freedom to more

1
- In April 1864, the Confederates killed captured black Union soldiers. At Fort Pillow, an
earthen fort on the Mississippi River about forty miles north of Memphis, Tennessee,
Confederate raiders under Nathan Bedford Forrest surprised and overwhelmed a garrison of
African Americans and Tennessee Unionists guarding the Fort. Several hundred black soldiers
were killed in that incident, many of them after they allegedly tried to surrender.

8
than four million blacks. Yet, it created real challenges for president Lincoln and U.S. policy

makers. The latter found unpleasant reactions and harsh criticism from white politicians, such as

democrats and civilians, toward their policy of emancipating their human property.

2.2The Final Emancipation Proclamation:

By the end of December 1862, Abraham Lincoln accomplished his promise of

freeing the slaves by signing the final Emancipation Proclamation in January 1st, 1863. This

version was different from the previous one; it came up with the employment of freed men into

the military services on behalf of the Union. In her work. The Destruction of Slave y in the

Confederate Territories’’. Ira Berlin Frederick Douglass had argued that basically a moderate

share of sagacity was essential to witness that the arm of the slave was the best protection against

the arm of the slaveholder (quoted in Halpern, 382).

Like the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, The final one also applied

only for the confederate states, but it welcomed the escaping slaves into the Union army.

Vorenberg, Michael quoted President Lincoln: “You southern men will soon reach the point

where bonds will be a more valuable possession than bondsmen. Nothing is more uncertain now

than two-legged property” (31). Therefore, the emancipation fell too short of the goal of a

universal permanent emancipation.

Unlike the Preliminary Emancipation, According to Halpern, the final draft includes

nothing about compensation, gradualism, or colonization which had been always Lincoln’s

projects (280). Yet In 1863, initial steps had been taken because from the time when the army

moved into the south; it required apparently everlasting flood of laborers to accomplish

reinforcement and an additional soldier safeguard. Shaffer thinks that the reservoir of the black

man power could not be ignored, but only with the Emancipation Proclamation that the

9
enlistment of the black man begun in earnest (45). That idea was confirmed by President Lincoln

who declared it as an act of justice that persons of suitable condition will be received into the

army services of the United States (Shaffer, 171).

The effects of these provisions were felt immediately after the release of the

Emancipation Proclamation when thousands of blacks enlisted in the army. African Americans

were very delighted when they knew about the document but the abolitionists were disappointed

because the proclamation was circulating out of the military requirement. McPherson, James, M.

assumed that the opportunity to enlist in the army gave to the ex-slaves a chance to earn their

freedom with their hands and to prove that they deserve to be respected as Americans. Men,

women and children felt that they have to seize this chance in the war efforts because it may

force the white to reconsider their racial prejudices and stereotypes (62).

In short, the emancipation proclamation was a weapon of both economic and

political warfare. John hope, Franklin assumed that as a war measure, the president saw

emancipation as a primary means of weakening the southern rebels by withdrawing slave labor

from the confederate economy, which is basically depended on slave plantation (191).

3. Blacks Serving in the Union Army

When the Emancipation Proclamation opened the doors for blacks to enlist in

the union army, blacks seized the opportunity to prove their loyalty and patriotism to serve their

country in its hard time. During 1863, thousands of black men volunteered for service on behalf

of the union; some traveled the long distance across the confederate territory risking their lives in

the effort of the war. Eric Forner emphasized that military services for the black soldiers meant

more than the opportunity to serve the union, even more than their own freedom and the

10
destruction of slavery as an institution. For talent and ambition, the army flung opened a door to

advancement and respectability (196).

According to John Hope Franklin, the blacks’ enlistment was, a remarkable

success ; more than 186,000 had enrolled in the union army by the end of the war, and from the

seceded states came 93.000 and from the boarded slave states 40.000. The remainders,

approximately 53.000, were from the free states and possibly the total figure was larger (196).

Blacks first organized in a regiment in 1862 Louisiana, Kansas, and South

Carolina. However, the war department created a segregated unit called the United States

Colored Troops (USCT) in order to distinguish them from the white soldiers and, for the most

part, they were led by the white officers with some black noncommissioned officers. in early

1863, nearly two years after the black men had begun petition to join the union war effort, the

war department authorized Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut to organize blacks’

regiments. Black men in the confederacy waged no such campaign, although a few dozen to a

few hundred served in the confederate forces (Lardas, 7).

The Confederates did what they could to deny black solider respect as worthy

opponents. In Saffer Donald R stated that in May 1863, the confederacy announced its intention

to kill or sell into slavery the black prisoner of the war. During 1864, reports surfaced repeatedly

of confederates murdering black prisoners of the war. The worst instance of murder occurred in

April1 864 at Fort Pillow, Tennessee. The confederates committed the massacre and founded

the Ku Klux Klan one year after the war (saffer, 69).

The summer of 1863 brought a turning point on the combat zone as well as in

the politics of the war. Maldwyn also stated in his work, the limits of Liberty ,that in the battles

of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and Vicksburg, Mississippi, the union blocked the confederate’s

push into northern territory and assumed command of the Mississippi river; the major artery of

11
transportation and trade. Union forces at that time proscribed the entire of Tennessee and were

on the edge to break up the confederacy again (230-1).

Despite anti-black violence, black soldiers proved themselves valuable and

valiant fighting troops in the mid 1863. Brogan Huge said: “the armies of the armies were

correspondingly strengthened .Slaves and contrabands proved to be invaluable spies, guides for

the advancing northerners” (342). In addition to that, Lardas Mark said that the famous assault of

Fort Wagner’s, South Carolina, the Massachusetts 54th regiment astonished the world for this act

of bravery, but it lost half of its men. Despite the significant importance of African Americans in

the battle field black soldiers were not exempt from discrimination. They could not achieve high

officer’s ranks and they earned lower wages than their white counterparts (Lardas, 46).

Obviously, hundreds of thousands of black men, women, and children

advanced the union and enlisted inside and around the organized armed forces. Without their

active support, the union would not have won this war on southern territory. The enslaved were

not given their freedom; they earned it through their heroic fight in the war. Ira Berlin

emphasized that the importance of Freedmen for being soldiers in the civil army, and she said

that military services had provided black men with legal freedom and overturned the

embarrassing outcome of southern slavery and northern prejudice (quoted in Halpern, 398).

Broadly speaking, Black soldiers’ heroism on the battlefield strengthened

their position to emphasize their right to end discriminated attitudes toward them. Eric Forner

thinks that regardless of how well educated or experienced or successful they were as soldiers,

black men could not rise through the ranks to be commissioned officers (8).

The campaign for equal pay became part of the battle; enlisted men or

noncommissioned officers received; pay of 7$ per month. this rate prevailed whether or not the

soldier had been before the war and regardless of his level of education or military experience.

12
White enlisted men received $13 per month plus a $3 clothing allowance. White sergeant

received $21 per month, but white commissioned officers received a few dollars more per

month, depending upon their rank (Lardas, 23).

Black soldiers and their abolitionist supporters protested against the injustice

of discriminatory payments. Lower pay insulted black soldiers and imposed dire hardship upon

their families. Lardas Mark supposed that the Massachusetts 54th and 55th regiments refused to

accept the lower rate of the pay as a matter of honor. They even resisted the equalization offer

from the start on the ground that they fought for the union, and the union, not the state, should

pay them fair wages. In the late1863 the 3rd South Carolina volunteers regiment of former

slaves, stacked their arms, and refused to serve until granted equal pay and the army executed

their sergeant. (46).

4. Slavery Destroyed

Enslaved African Americans like their freedom. Northern black and white

allies knew immediately that slavery lays sat the basis of the war and that if the union won, they

would be free. The dramatic and bright ways, African American began seizing their freedom as

soon as fighting broke out. Slavery gave away freedom in many different ways, depending upon

individuals, families, and the circumstance of the servitude and warfare (Saffer, 48).

The Emancipation proclamation was certainly the most influential instrument

of slavery destruction, above any other measure; it defined the Civil War as a war for black

freedom. Nearly, all Americans today would depict the Emancipation Proclamation as the most

significant result of the war. Vorenberg, Michael stated that as if this original document had not

been damaged by fire in 1871; it would no doubt have resided at the side of the Declaration of

Independence and the Constitution as one of the U.S. national treasures. Yet, even those who

13
argued that slaves did more than white commanders and politicians to put an end to slavery

leaned to see the Emancipation Proclamation as the brightest attainment of slaves labors on

behalf of their own freedom (1).

It was factual that, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave, but

it gave freedom as an ethical acknowledgment.This act of justice led the slaves to call president

Abraham Lincoln “Father Abraham” as a thankful l acknowledgment for his acts against slavery.

Many Americans during this period would have considered today’s respect for the proclamation

as misplaced. They knew that the proclamation freed slaves in only some areas –the southern

states that were under the confederate control – leaving open the possibility that it might never

apply to the Whole country (Freund, 125).

Even when the union forces were far away, owners began to notice changes

in their workers. Sometimes the change was obvious in displays of independence or anger; both

were forbidden in the slave regime. Vorenberg, Michael considers that more often the enslaved

ran away from their master, especially when owners sought to move their workers away from

hostilities. As soon as the union forces came anywhere near, black men, women and children

volunteered as workers, and if possible, as soldiers. Such act inspired the confiscation acts of

18612and18623. As the union-occupied territory of the tidewater of Virginia South Carolina,

Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana, thousands of fugitive slaves made themselves effectively free

by flocking to the union army (25-6).

2
- First Confiscation Act, which allowed federal authorities to Confiscate slaves used by Confederates for military

purposes

3
- Second Confiscation Act, which emancipated all slaves owned by rebel masters

14
 By and large, the road of proceedings leading from the Emancipation

Proclamation to the Thirteenth Amendment was everything but expectable. After Lincoln issued

the Emancipation Proclamation. The policymaker, politician, and ordinary Americans measured

different strategies for shaping an everlasting constitutional Emancipation. The abolition

amendment was basically the principal choice. Simply throughout the line of political struggles,

in late 1863 and early 1864, that the amendment came out as the most popular of the abolition

alternatives. By mid of 1864, the amendment had become a principal policy of the Republican

Party, which planed the measure into its national platform (2).

As affirmed from Republican policy, the amendment should contain the

subjected political battle of 1864, but the unpredicted conditions and varying party policies drove

the measure from civic debate. Nevertheless, followers of the amendment claimed the

Republican triumphs of 1864 as a mandate for the amendment, and they successfully approved

the amendment. According to Vorenberg Michael, Congress in January 1865a number of states

rapidly ratified the measure, and ratification was complete by the end of that year. The cycle of

actions was vital: the amendment turned into party guidelines before its value or importance was

specifically understood. For historians in quest of recovering one unique meaning of the

Thirteenth Amendment, the early change of the measure into a party strategy symbolizes an

actual trouble. As a party strategy, the amendment attracted support from people with

comparable political objectives but dissimilar notions of freedom. Because of the varied

constituencies behind the amendment, some of its followers permitted the meaning of the

measure to stay vague. If they had instead appointed an accurate sense to the amendment, they

Would have separated some of those constituencies and put at risk the measure’s agreement

(quoted in Vorenberg, 2).

15
 In short, the release of Thirteen Amendment gave a dramatic end to the Civil

War after a long battle to restore the union. The way toward the thirteen amendments was

paved through the two important versions of the Emancipation Proclamation, the preliminary

and the final version. These were the documents of redemption; for blacks from chains of

slavery and for the states form the war with no more casualties. Thus, the fight for equality

started within the civil war, when African Americans first tested freedom as a result of the

Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. African Americans and their supporters the abolitionists’

of slavery started preparing themselves for a new era of freedom blended with equality.

Fazit

The union victory of April 1865 resulted in the legal emancipation that

black and white abolitionists had demanded from the beginning. During the Civil War, black

men, women and children had to seize their freedom by serving as soldiers, sailors, scouts,

nurses, and laborers. Black men, from Maine and Vermont, joined the tens of thousands from

the Confederacy on the side of the Union. They and their families saw, their service as a

payment of their freedom. The Civil War ended in emancipation, but making freedom real

demands a series of struggles that would last for another hundred years and more. That

struggle actually began through design to new era known as Reconstruction.

16
Chapter two:

Making Freedom Real; The Status of The Freedmen During the

Reconstruction Era.

We are as a people, chained together. We are one people—one in general

complexion, one in a common degradation, one in popular estimation. Having

now, our feet on the rock of freedom, we must drag our brethren from the slimy

depths of slavery, ignorance, and ruin. The wrongs of our brethren should be our

constant theme...We ask you to devote yourselves to this cause, as one of the

first and most successful means of self improvement.. You will learn your own

rights, and comprehend your own responsibilities, and, scan through the vista of

coming time, your high and God-appointed destiny (Frederick Douglass, 127).

Einführung

By the end of the Civil War the experience of bondage and servitude remained

deeply fixed in the blacks’ collective memory. With the beginning of a new period, the

Reconstruction Era, African Americans sought to achieve independence, autonomy and freedom

from white people both as individuals and as members of community. Legal freedom meant that

those who had been enslaved could marry, earn wages, change employers and own property. They

were no longer mere extensions of other people’s will. Making freedom real meant more than a

changed legal and economic status. For many freed people families and land of their own came

first. They also made freedom real by creating their own educational and religious institutions.

Only men could vote but the whole of the community took interest in politics.

17
1. Social and Political Adjustment:

1.1. The Creation of the Freedmen Bureau

As the war clouds left the United States, the country entered a new period

known as Reconstruction. The southerners emancipated blacks and sought firstly to reunite their

families, parents, and children, who had been separated by sale, by their owner’s migration, and

by the disorder of hostilities. Eric Forner believed that the emancipation proclamation was an

important instrument to stabilize and strengthen the black family; it changes many things in their

life style. The most significant one was that the slave families divided much of the time because

their numbers belonged to different owners and they could now live together (84, 5).

In addition to that, the freedmen bureau monopolized the effort to reunite the

black family; the bureau received many letters of thanks about finding the information about the

needed persons such as Mr. Jacob Galloway who thanks Jackson, the director of the freedmen

bureau, for information about his son. Freedom had more personal meanings as well for freed

people wanted to appear more attractive than they had been as ragged slaves. They cast off the

slave clothing of degraded drudges and adorned themselves as handsomely as possible. Their

improved appearance confused and outraged observers as much as their new sense of

independence (Cement, 85).

For the reasons of reuniting their families and searching for new methods of

life, blacks migrated to other places for a better life. Hundreds of thousands men and women

made their freedom a legal process that begun with white soldiers during the war. Slaves had

not been able to marry legally, and slave sales together with the disorder of the war had further

disrupted relationships. Eric Forner adds that: « with freedom came developments that

18
 strengthened patriarchy within the black family and institutionalized the notion that women and

men should inhabit separate spheres » (87). People who had never expected to see their partners

again after many years of separation had taken new spouses. In such a situation, freedom and

reunification could impose wrenching choices.

Earlier than the end of the Civil War, the U.S policy maker, President

Abraham Lincoln, and Congress admitted that the government must give a proposal as a support

to newly emancipated slaves. The proposal was simply The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and

Abandoned Lands, commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau; this was as federal

government’s agency that aided distressed refuges and freed men during the period of 1865-

1872. During the Reconstruction era, this agency operated under the supervision of the War

Department (The Freedmen's Bureau, Wikipedia 1)

After deep thoughts over the duties and the capacity of the agency, Congress

passed a bill to empower the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau on March 3, 1865. Besides,

President Lincoln signed the bill in the same day: « Be it enacted by the Senate and House of

Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that there is hereby

established in the War Department, to continue during the present war of rebellion, and for one

year» (quoted from Act to establish a Bureau of Freedmen 1866).

In his famous work Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt believe that President

Andrew Johnson was frightened from building a dependent class of white and blacks and

vetoed a bill to renew the bureau in 1866 and to increase its power. Congress ignored the veto;

however, the bill prolonged its life until the summer of 1872 (Du Bois, 354-5).

President Lincoln was assassinated before he could appoint a commissioner to

direct the bureau. Lincoln’s past choice, President Johnson, agreed to follow his predecessor's

19
 wish and he appointed Major General Oliver Otis1 Howard. To aid Howard, ten assistant

commissioners directed agency work at the state and local level (Du Bois, 354-5).

Howard considered education a key to the future advancement of the ex-slaves,

and the bureau established a number of freedmen's schools. Attendance at the schools soared as

freedmen of all ages flocked at restricted buildings to learn basic reading, writing, and

mathematical skills. Du Bois assumed that violent acts, such as the burning of schools and

vicious threats against teachers and students, flared after the Memphis riots of May 1866, and

tested the dedication of the freedmen and their instructors. Courageous blacks continued to

enrol in schools, and a vast number of eager pupils required more teachers. In January 1866,

assisted by the American Missionary Association and the Western Freedmen's Aid

Commission, Fisk organized a school in Nashville. The following year, this school became Fisk

University and offered a program to train black teachers for the freedmen’s schools. The

greatest success of the Freedmen's Bureau lays in the planting of free schools among blacks,

and the idea of free elementary education among all classes in the South (354-5).

In addition to managing schools, the bureau negotiated labour contracts

between the ex-slaves and white employers and even provided legal guidance. The bureau also

programmed hospitals, orphanages, and elderly homes. Whites in Tennessee, particularly in the

middle and western parts of the state, strongly opposed the goals of the Freedmen's Bureau.

White animosity stemmed from a belief that the freedmen's schools functioned as incubators of

Radical Republicanism. In some areas of the state, the Ku Klux Klan scared black citizens and

galvanized the whites by broadcasting the bureau's efforts to achieve black suffrage (

Cement, 101).
1
- - General Oliver Howards was the freedmen bureau commissioner, who was a graduate in Bowdoin College and

veteran in the Civil War.

20
 Fisk's term ended on September 1st, 1866, and General J. R. Lewis, who had

fulfilled the duties of an assistant commissioner in Middle Tennessee, held the post as an

interim. After three months, Major General W. P. Carlin took the helm. By the time he

accepted the office, the bureau's primary responsibility involved schools for the freedmen;

when the state assumed the management of the black schools in February 1867, the activity of

the bureau was moderate until it was gradually phased out by Brevet-Major L. N. Clark in

1869. The Freedmen's Bureau guided the states’ blacks on the journey from slavery to freedom

by providing education, lobbying for political equality, and meeting physical needs (Du Bois,

354-5).

1.2. Education for Freedmen

As slaves, southern people had been kept uneducated, and they rightly

regarded their ignorance as a badge of servitude. In 1860, more than 90 percent of the adults’

southern black population was illiterate. After emancipation, education became one of their

priorities and earliest preoccupation. Eric Forner assured that, by the end of the war, the black

community had founded more than 120 schools, serving some 13,000 students (Forner, 86).

The black southerners were eager to educate themselves and their children

without caring about the cost or the place of the schools and that obviously appeared in the

words of Bookert Washington, one of the blacks’ prominent leaders, who said: « it was a whole

race trying to go to school» (quote in Eliot, 82). also he added : « few were too trying and none

too old to make the attempt to learn , as fast as , any kind of teachers could be secured , not only

were day schools filled .But night as well The great ambition of the older people was to try to

learn to read the bible before they died » (Eliot, 82). In some places many blacks left their houses

in search for education because access for education for themselves and their children was the

point. Eric Forner thinks that the desire to learn led the blacks’ parents to migrate to the towns

21
and cities in search for education for their children, and for plantation works to make the

establishment of school houses (86).

In addition to that, several societies contributed in the effort to found the first

black schools such as the freedmen bureau, and white radicals. These societies played a

considerable role in building the black school houses, providing them with teachers and helping

their educational objective. Fuke Paul, Richard, in his famous book, Imperfect Equality: African

Americans and Whites Racial Attitudes in Post Emancipation Maryland, asserted in November

1864, immediately after the state Emancipation Proclamation, that a group of prominent white

Quakers, businessmen, and lawyers commited themselves to the black education (199).

Fuke Paul Richard also adds that by the end of 1865, many northern societies

had provided many schools, such as Maryland schools with teachers; their sponsors were New

England’s. Freedmen’s Aid Society, the National Freedman’s Relief Association, the

Pennsylvania Freedman’s Relief Association, and the American Missionary Association paid

their transportation and part of their salaries .Along with other African American church

missionary societies, they founded institutions such as a university in Orangeburg , South

Carolina which begun as a barker bible institute in Charleston in 1866. At that period, the

association had opened seven schools in Baltimore and eighteen in the rural countries in the

South (89).

Despite all the difficulties, the blacks poor or wealthy co-operated to found

schools that are important in the building of the structure of the black community. In his book,

The Imperfect Equality, Richard Paul highlighted that the learning objective engaged an essential

position in the post-emancipation agenda of the countryside black society and regardless of the

many difficulties in their course, mothers, fathers, and children struggled tremendously to make

their schools a success (100).

22
 In different states, exactly in the north, black people felt ties toward the

southern blacks; those ties after the war were translated in going south as teachers. Those ties

did not concern only blacks; whites also arrived to the south as teachers by the help of human

association. Most of the teachers were middle class; white women and the majorities were from

New England, sent to the south by human association aid (Forner, 44).

Much like any new society, the black community faced many problems in the

process of finding the schools. Among those difficulties were the poor and primitive conditions

of the schools; the lack of sufficient books and materials and classes of 100 or more children in

one class. Forner argued that equally disheartened is the great problem among teachers; the male

dominated aid societies and thus denied woman teachers a role in decisions, and expected from

them to meet their own travel and living expenses on salaries that were lower than what they

could have earned by remaining in the north. Some female teachers resigned in protest to the

rules that barred them from becoming school principals and super intendents (85).

In short, education was not a solution; however, it contained its own

complexity. For the body of formal education knowledge in the United States conveyed its

assumption that African Americans were ignorant and inferior as a race. In pursuit of

knowledge, particularly higher education, black educators continually had to negotiate between

promoting useful skills and countering anti-black stereotypes.

In addition to that, the school was not the only institution that the freed men

could gain knowledge in, the church also could be a place where one could obtain knowledge

and enlightment. Eric Forner said: “the teachers employed by the American missionary

association used bible classes to inveigh against” (91).

Eric Forner thinks that the church operated as a “religious court house”, raising

moral values, as well as punishing persons intended for adultery and other illegal performance.

23
In each district, priests were along with the most appreciated persons, in favor of their respect for

their vocalization skills, directorial capacity, furthermore for their high-quality ruling of both

civic and private issues. Certainly, preachers arrived to play an essential position in black politics

during reconstruction (92).

In the process of building the black community, southern blacks either in large

cities or in rural places continued to throw the chains of servitude by freeing themselves from the

white control and designing for local autonomy, self determination and redrawing a new map for

the south. Many of such institutions achieved a considerable degree, even though the law required

that the posters be white (Forner, 89). In addition to that, among the factors that led to the creation

of blacks’ independence church was the refusal of whites to offer blacks an equal place within

their congregation. That clearly appears in the words of Eric Forner: “Reconstruction was a time

of Consolidation and transformation for the black religion and for the creation of independence

religious” (98).

Throughout the south the black churches offered spaces where African

Americans could confer and worship as they were pleased; free of white surveillance. As black

people’s largest public meeting places, churches also frequently housed schools and voluntary

associations. Eric Forner said that meeting in church, women and children could participate in

political discussions and thus influence politics without being able to vote. Along with schools,

southern black churches became a symbol of Emancipation, and political empowerment of

reconstruction, where education, politics, and social life are all converged (89).

Tens of thousands of African Americans, who as slaves had lacked their own

church which, belonged to predominantly white congregation, now, withdrew to their own

places of worship. As a result, the first black religious institution came to birth in mid

Charleston’s town, in Calhoun Street, by 1866and then others had been constructed. In rural

24
 areas, former slave preachers and missionaries from the north spurred the creation of religious

institutions (Forner, 90).

To sum up, throughout reconstruction, religious conventions profoundly

affected the way blacks understood the momentous events around them and the very language in

which they expressed their aspiration for justice and autonomy.

1.3. Voting and Holding Office.

While some white abolitionists declared their mission accomplished with the

passage of the thirteen amendment outlawing slavery, some conservatives, including most

white southerners, northern Democrats, and some northern Republicans, opposed black voting.

Some northern states had referendums on the subject limiting the ability of their own small

populations of blacks to vote .Fredrik Douglass thought that the work was only half done:

“Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot”. Black men in the north as well as

the south needed the vote; before the ratification of the fourteen and Fifteen Amendments; only

in New England could northern black men vote or hold office (Franklin, 231).

Before the end of the war, black and white abolishers had seen black men’s

enfranchisement as the only way to protect African American’s freedom as a necessary right in

the south. Richard Paul wrote, in 1864, that black men met in Syracuse, New York, to form a

national equal rights league and demand the vote for a range of civil rights that northern states

had denied. Frederick Douglass stirred a black audience in Baltimore with the claim that: "if

the Negro is called upon to take his share of the toils and danger of warfare . . . he should also

have the privileges of elective franchise." The subject failed to surface in the 1864 state

constitutional convention, and several petitions from blacks seeking the vote received scant

consideration from either house of the General Assembly (148).

25
 Northern as well as southern whites opposed enfranchised black men. In

1864, President Abraham Lincoln had argued to limit suffrage for black men upon the leaders

of the conquered and readmitted state of Louisiana. Lincoln had supported a middle position to

allow some black men to vote, especially army veterans. Johnson also believed that such

service should be rewarded with citizenship. Lincoln proposed giving the vote to "the very

intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks." The new, all white

legislature rejected Lincoln‘s suggestion as being out of hand. Lincoln’s notion of

reconstruction after the war would only tinker with the south’s power structure, not overturn it

to the degree necessary to permit black suffrage (Suffrage during the reconstruction era,

(Wikipedia).

Ultimately, southern black men gained the vote before northern blacks.

Without southern black men, who supported the republicans, the southern states could not be

readmitted into the union. That is to say, the former confederacy could not be reconstructed as a

loyal part of the United States. Without the blacks’ voters, the southern states would return to the

control of the democrats who had taken the confederacy out of the union in the first place.

Congressional republicans faced a tough choice: either they would need to enfranchise black

southerners, who would be republicans, or they would see the south revert to control by the

democrats who had seceded in 1861(Franklin, 214).

Congress wrested control by the reconstruction away from President Johnson

in late 1866 and impeached him, taking control of the process of readmitting the states of the

former confederacy. Black men were allowed to elect and to be elected as delegates to the

constitutional convention that would reconstruct the southern states. In January 1867, black men

throughout the former Confederate States and the District of Columbia voted and held office for

the first time, all as republicans. The union army oversaw the process of registering 735.000

black and 635.000 white men. Five states – Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama,
26
and Florida – had black electoral majorities. Before the 1868 ratification of the fourteenth

amendment, the southern states’ constitutional conventions abolished property qualifications for

voting and holding office, providing for the full enfranchisement of poor men, white and black

(suffrage during the reconstruction era, Wikipedia).

Reconstruction occasionally created unexpected opportunities, particularly in

areas of heavy blacks. Maldwyn, A Jones said that in New Jersey and Georgia, African

Americans went south after the war by the prospect of helping the freed people and enlarging

their own opportunities (236).

In State legislatures of 1867, black men held the majority only in South

Carolina; South Carolina’s first congressional reconstruction legislature had a black majority,

although whites always controlled the states senates. (Suffrage during the reconstruction era,

Wikipedia).

African Americans in Office 1870–1876

State U.S. U.S.
State
Legislators Senators Congressmen
Alabama 69 0 4
Arkansas 8 0 0
Florida 30 0 1
Georgia 41 0 1
Louisiana 87 0 1
Mississippi 112 2 1
North
30 0 1
Carolina
South
190 0 6
Carolina
Tennessee 1 0 0
Texas 19 0 0
Virginia 46 0 0
Total 633 2 15

27
 To sum up, the Fifteenth Amendment did not give only the right to vote for

African Americans for participating in political courses, but, it guaranteed their total freedom

from the white control and obliged the white race, via legal document, to respect the freedmen as

Americans.

2. Economic Adjustment:

In the course of reconstruction, economic adjustment was the only thing that

can prove the ambiguity of freedom and the short-term relief of the freedmen as guidance along

the road of economic stability and independence. The release from the bondage of servitude of

four million people had serious implications for the economic structure of the South at that time.

2.1. Agriculture as a Field of Interest for the Freedmen

By the end of the war, reconstruction of the South was not very difficult

because its economy depended on agriculture; everything might be destroyed but the land

remained. Maldwyn, A Jones assumed that for blacks ,at that point ,freedom meant more than

received wages but it was to take control of the conditions under which the labourers are not

deprived of the fruit of their labour. Contemporaries believed that the Civil War had resulted into

the breakup of the plantation system into small farms (Maldwyn, 263). The freedmen rejected

gang labour work patterns that had been used in slavery. In the famous book, The Growth of the

American Republic, Morison, Eliot Samuel wrote with a strong backing of the Freedman's

Bureau, which forced planters to bargain for their labor. Such bargaining soon led to the

establishment of the system of sharecroppers, which was an arrangement whereby plantation

could obtain labor without paying wages and lands without paying rents. Instead of

interchanging money for labor and rents, there was a sharing of crops. This system gave the

freedmen some of economic independence and social autonomy more than gang labor; however,

it is not the radical solution (92).

28
 Acres per worker on white and black family cotton

The amount of the land acreage available to African-American farmers was consistently less

than that available to whites.

Form of tenure white farmers black farmers

Owner-operated farms 12.5 acres 6.6 acres

Rented farms 14.5 acres 7.3 acres

Sharecroppers farms 11.7 acres 8.0 acres

All farms 12.4acres 7.5 acres

Because they lacked capital and the planters continued to own the means of

production (tools, draft animals and land), the freedmen were forced into producing cash crops

(mainly cotton) for the land-owners and merchants, and they entered into a crop-lien system.

Gable Kate wrote in her work, Political Contribution to Racism during the Civil War and

Reconstruction, that under this system the farmer mortgaged his ingrown crop in order to obtain

surplus for a year. Thus, black land owners were few in number and generally possessed small

holdings. The Prevalence of poverty, the disruption of an agricultural economy and the falling

price of cotton led, within decades, to the routine indebtedness of the majority of the freedmen,

and poverty of many planters (76).

29
 African American Land Ownership in The Rural Georgia , 1870’s

During the 1870’s, African Americans made up just under half of the population of

Georgia. Not surprisingly, however, they owned almost none of the lands and held very

few other assets.

Type of assets percentage

Owned by
African Americans
Land 1.0%

City/town 2.7%

Money /liquid assets 0.4%

Furniture 5.2%

Livestock 1.1%

Tools 4.9%

All other property 13.1%

Total taxable weather 2.5%

To deal with these new circumstances, the postwar southern state governments

largely run by planters and their sympathizers passed a series of strict new laws governing the

freed population. The so-called Black Codes were intended to return the social and economic

order of the south to the way it had been lived under slavery.

30
The Black Codes

Listed below are numbers of black codes passed in Mississippi in 1865.

Apprentice Law

 All freedmen under 18 years who are orphans or financially unprovided for by their

parents, shall be forcibly apprenticed .

 If apprentice escapes and its caught, master may reclaim him .apprentice faces

Imprisonment if he or she refused to comply.

 Employer is legally allowed to punish the freedmen in any way or guardian might their own

Children or reward
.

 Apprentice shall be indentured until 21years of age if male and 18years female.

Civil Rights of Freedom

 Freedmen are forbidden to marry any white persons upon penalty of life imprisonment.

 Reward offered to any person who catches freedmen who quits their employer’s service
prior

to official termination.
.

 Penalty of up to $200 for any white man who employs or aid a run-away freedman.

Vagrancy Law

 All freedmen over the age of 18 who do not have written proof of employment at the

31
 Beginnings of each year are vagrants.

 All vagrants shall be fined up to$50 and jailed up to 10 days.

 If freedmen cannot pay the fine, he shall be hired out to any white man how will pay it

for him, with the amount deducted from his wage.

 If freedmen between 18and 60 years of age will pay a tax up to$ 1 per year toward the

Freedmen’s pauper fund.

 If a freedmen cannot pay a tax, he is a vagrant and be hired out to any white men

will pay for him.

Penal code
 Illegal for freedmen to carry firearms.

 Illegal for freedmen to sell liquor, participate in riots, use insulting languages or gestures, or

preach the gospel without a license.

Freedmen are liable for fines for the above, and if a freedman refuses to pay, he will hire out

to any white man who will pay for him.

Source: James, ciment, the atlas of the African American History. (90)

32
 Franklin thought that the black codes represent the effort of the South to

solve problems created by the presence of the freedmen, as the freedmen bureau represents the

effort of the federal government to achieve the same end (Franklin, 212). These codes simply

were the implication of the white opinion to control the right of the freedmen.

2.2 Industry as a New Fashion for Freedmen:

Following the end of the war, southerners were looking for a solution to

economic recovery from the war devastation, especially by the end of slavery plantation system

that led to the decline of agriculture. Many southerners were convinced that their economic

salvation lies in industrialization. At that period, most of blacks were living in rural areas and

were working in sharecropping system; however, significant numbers joined their followers in

urban cities and took the advantage to join this revolution. They migrated to urban cities not

because they knew their industrial development, but because of hatred to plantation life, which

was still associated with slavery (Franklin, 214).

During that period, the manufacturers were looking for cheap labor. Franklin

assumed that they did not hesitate to employ the black’s labor in order to undermine the white

labor and secure eight-hour ‘workers. In the postwar period, blacks were not welcomed into

labor organizations, especially the locals, on the ground that local autonomy must be preserved.

Some admitted them, such as the carpenters, in 1866 and the national labor union invited blacks

to cooperate in the general movement (Eliot, 215). Eliot Samuel added that by the 1980s,

foreigners and northern businessmen were investing in the south; much of this investment was

for: rebuilding, modernization and expanding the railroads. At that period, no less than 23.000

miles much of the railroads in Taxes, but it were over 14.000miles east of the Mississippi (96).

33
 The south had manufactured most of the nation’s tobacco even before the

War; it enjoyed the advantages of a proximity raw material, low transportation costs, and cheap

labor. Several companies reached prosperity such as the gigantic American tobacco company,

whose operation conducted in New York City, arranged from tobacco fields of the American

south to Europe, Egypt, India, and China. Some other industries flourished in the South, in the

eighties such as the coal and iron industry which centered in Birmingham, Alabama (Eliot, 98).

Besides, the most remarkable development exists, then again, in the textile

industry. Southern cotton manufacturing got underway before the Civil War; yet in the 1880s the

movement to bring the spindles to cotton took on the public crusade. In the famous book Elliot

asserted that the number of the south cotton mills, between 1880 and 1900, principally in the

Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama grew up from 158 to 416. The amount of capital invests in

southern textile mills increased seven folds, and the number of workers rose from 17.000 to

98.000 (Eliot, 96).

Though the growth of industry give a more diversified economy, progress was

less remarkable than it seemed. Moreover, the southern industry was not the most profitable.

Therefore, the combination of a new agriculture system with the industrial one was aimed to

build a strong economy where the freedmen have the lion share of the process of economic

reconstruction. Thus, the breakup in the old plantation system caused economic problems that

none of these systems helped for radical recovery.

Fazit

It seemed that the reconstruction era came as a God mercy to change the status

of freedmen and give them the chance to thatch the real freedom by contributing in the process

of reconstructing the south. The desire to forget the days of bondage and servitude led blacks to

34
search for local autonomy in order to escape from white supervision. However, the whites

wanted to keep their superiority on the freedmen by restricting their freedom through many ways

in order to prove the absence of equality in the new south and put them in front of real challenges

for equality

35
 Chapter Three:

The Challenges of the Freedmen in the Reconstruction Era.

To a far great extent than in the civil war, Reconstruction left a legacy of

sectional and racial bitterness. For the south-or at any rate the white south -

reconstruction was a traumatic ordeal, ‘a long dark, night’ that left a lasting

mark on the region’s of psychology .Moreover, along with the civil war, it

provided a facile explanation for all the south’s ills (Maldwyn, A Jones, 259).

Introduction:

Apparently, the Reconstruction Era came as redemption to the African

Americans ‘status after the long and heroic fight for their civil rights. By the end of the Civil

War, the freedmen thought that they reached what they wanted by the end of war, but reality is

too far from the dreams. The whites sooner repented and worried about the too much freedom

that had been granted to the newly freedmen and, as a result to that, they determined to give a

new definition to that freedom. These circumstances led the freedmen to face challenges against

their ambition and dreams in different areas during that period.

1. The Unfinished Revolution:

For African Americans, reconstruction was the period of hope and a great

promise of freedom which was drawn closer to conclude the saga of slavery and bring to fruition

their incomplete freedom .In his book, Witness for Freedom ,Peter Ripley asserted that African

Americans expected that reconstruction would devastate every vestige of southern slavery and

northerner discrimination. They found out the reconstruction as a momentous occasion to

36
reconstruct the American society. In the wake of thirty-five years of abolitionist labor and five

years of national sacrifice and war, black leaders were unwilling to see democracy postponed

again (278) .

However, their hopes and wills went with the wind; reconstruction brought a new

bondage to African Americans. It succeeded only to restore the power to the white men after

being guaranteed the success of the union to restore the country by freeing the slaves. Brogan

Hugh argued that the federates who pardoned members of the pre-war political and ruling class

were soon re-elected as state legislators, governors, Congressmen, and Senators .These leaders

had no intention of extending political equality and the right to vote to the freedmen. All the

southern state legislatures sooner passed Black Codes. These laws restricted the freedoms of

African Americans and limited the economic options of the freed; many freedmen were tied to

the plantations. By enforcing labor contracts and anti-vagrancy laws, the cruel Black Codes kept

many freedmen tied to the plantations (362).

it came to view that the confederate leaders created restricting laws and

systems, such as the black codes and the sharecropping system, which was a live testimony to

the original exploitation and bondage to the newly freedmen, in order to eliminate any chance of

equality between the two races and to offer a new designation to the meaning of freedom for the

ex-slaves by establishing racial segregation. In 1882, ex-slave Frederick Douglass wrote that

even if slavery was abolished, the problems of my folks were endless. No men are capable of

being really free, and his liberty is in need of notion, mood and deed of the others. Freedmen

were free from the individual master but they were slaves of society (the end of reconstruction,

history center).

Ripley also added that, all the way through the war, African Americans were

not in favor of the acceptance of incomplete freedom and they were the first to comprehend the

disastrous nature of the federal policies designed to return power to the southern white .Without
37
land, economic opportunity, protection of their civil rights, and the vote, African Americans

would endured a victory without peace (278).

In his work, Rise from Slavery, the prominent leader Booker T. Washington

concludes that the Northerners turned against African-Americans not for the reason of racism,

while they were undoubtedly racist. Northerners turned against freed people after the Civil War

because African Americans symbolize a notion of civilization and government that would

devastate the free labor world. Black society, it looked as if it endangered the foundation of the

American community (245).

As a plan, Reconstruction had many goals to achieve in the south after the war.

The first goal of the 12 years of Reconstruction was to set up a lifestyle of social equality for

all African Americans living in the south. This was the first time the South had been enforced

to place the equal opportunity of all persons before the law. The Second goal that

Reconstruction attempted to achieve was the redistribution of land to African Americans and

poor whites. However, the distribution of homesteads, or seizure of land, was met with little

success. One reason was because the North and South resisted to the extent that it was in

their power to holdup or conclude the plan. Lastly, Reconstruction attempted to change

African Americans’ lives, one last time, by giving them political freedom. With the new

arrangement they were able to work as sheriffs, mayors, justices, and take seats in the city

council (Gary B. Nash, 6).

Reconstruction had achieved the two great objectives inherited from the Civil

War: to reincorporate the former Confederate States in the union, and to fulfill the transition

from slavery to freedom in the south. But that transition was spoiled by economic inequity of

sharecropping and social injustice of white supremacy. Gary B. Nash adds that the third goal

of Reconstruction was the enforcement of equal civil and political rights promised in the

38
 fourteen and fifteen amendments, but was betrayed by the compromise of 1877. In

subsequent decades the freed slaves and their descendents suffered repression into segregated

second class citizenship (6).

It is true that, during the Reconstruction Era, the federal government created a

real achievement in rebuilding Southern states that were devastated by the war and in expanding

civic services, particularly in establishing tax-supported, free public schools for blacks and

whites. But In spite of that, the rebellious Southerners seized upon instances of corruption

(hardly unique to the South in that era) and exploited them to bring down radical regimes. The

failure of Reconstruction meant that the struggle of African Americans for equality and freedom

was postponed until the 20th century -- when it would become a national and not a regional issue

(The End of Reconstruction 14, 15).

2. The Myth of Equality:

The Reconstruction Era, resulted in an institution of racial segregation that

came as a consequence of the legislature’s basis that was created in the course of the Civil War,

such as the Confiscated Act of 1861 and the Emancipation proclamation of 1863, which

normally aimed to free the southern slaves and grant equality to the newly freedmen. Yet, these

legislations aimed to deprive the confederate masters from the slave labor in order to destabilize

the southern economy, and thus win the war. Following the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, three

amendments to the Constitution, known as the Reconstruction Amendments, were approved. The

Thirteenth Amendment of 1865 ended slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 made of ex-

slaves citizens and the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870 guaranteed African-American men the

right to vote (Desegregation segregation after the civil war, Wikipedia).

39
 In her work, Political Contributions to Racism during the Civil War

reconstruction, Kate Grabel concluded that the prejudice against blacks was so enveloping that

the new laws, and the rights that go together with citizenship, were often ignored. According to

Gabel, each bill, passed during the civil war and all the way through the reconstruction, offered

for the freedmen of black slaves a freedom in the sense that they would no longer be legally

bound into slave labor. Yet, they did nothing to protect the freedom and liberty that was

guaranteed to all U.S citizens by the Declaration of Independence (74).

Equality was not programmed on the schedule of American policy makers at

the very beginning of the reconstructing process, wherein the conviction of black inferiority was

deeply rooted in their minds. In 1857 Chief Justice Taney said that for a long time slaves were

considered as an inferior creature and unfit to associate with the white race, in both social and

political relations. So blacks might honestly and legally be reduced to slaves for their benefit

(quoted inChris, 1).

Still by the end of the Civil War, the new freedmen could not experience their

freedom without the aid of the government because the southern states ‘policies continued to

restrict their liberties. But the government failed to enact the amendments. Again, the federal

government passed the fourteen amendments that protect the freedmen equally under the law.

The Civil Right Act of 1875 makes it clear that the U.S government by all means aimed to

outlaw discriminatory practices in the United States. This Act was never aimed to ensure total

equality to African Americans ‘community and that makes it clear that there is no serious action

to put in force the amendments or the acts. It becomes evident that true equality was never an

objective or goal within the South (Grabel, 77).

In addition to that, politicians quarreled with the constitution that called only

for equal treatment of all the citizens and in no way outlawed separate services. For black and

40
white, the problems of this policy were that the services for the blacks were frequently much less

accommodating than those for the white citizens. Since white Americans wanted to live far from

blacks, the US politicians found no solution except to create separate services for the newly freed

black community and white Americans. Fuke Paul said: “The most visible indication of a

divided society was the physical separation of white and blacks’ residential areas; in both urban

and rural areas of the state, the race lived apart” (196).

Gable adds that in order to maintain separate living conditions for blacks and

whites in the south, laws were rapidly passed (80). This separation showed the way to further

racially prejudiced thoughts in the United States of America. These policies were not put in

effect. Blacks had almost no contact among whites even radical politicians and federal agencies

restricted their social interactions with blacks to attendance to lecturers, public conventions,

and also the occasional contact on an individual basis. No blacks lived, worshiped, studied, or

entertained on a regular basis with the white; clubs, beneficial societies and military association

remained strictly segregated (Fuke, 195).

It is true that the freedmen got many opportunities to improve their status

through reconstruction policies but these policies widened the gap between the two races and

separated them; yet this separation was not equal. What is more, these policies led the freedmen

to feel inferior to the white men. The freedmen expected that Reconstruction will change their

status as the Civil War did, but they were shocked with its measures which aimed only to

restore the south to its previous masters and bonded them again to a new system that was not so

far from servitude.

41
3. The African Americans’ Challenges in the Reconstruction Era:

During the Reconstruction Era, the freedmen faced a real challenge in the

course of shifting their social and economic status in the U .S. The major challenge that the

freedmen faced was equality; the freedmen continued to feel inferior to the white men even

throughout legislations and systems that were normally passed to guarantee their rights. Bu t in

fact they discriminated against them. Economically speaking, they were considered inferior to

the white men and; they were still working for their benefits because the white men were the

land owners. Kate Crabel finds out that the federal government created a system, where the white

man could resume his job as the “boss” and the freedman as the “worker”. This system intended

to limit the choices of the freedman from being owner of the land rather than being worker in

order to persist in his image as inferior in the south. As long as the freedmen entered to the new

systems of labor with no property, government was not intended to supply them, so, they had to

work and support themselves in order not to weaken the economy (76).

The freedmen found themselves obliged to enter a new plantation system; the

sharecropping and tenant farming, because they did not have any resources and property.

Sharecropping was based on the group contract system in which white land possessor would

provide a few acres of land, wages, and accommodation to freedmen’s family in exchange for

cultivating and harvesting the crops and delivering the greatest part of the harvest to the land

owners. Maybee brayn pointed out that this system did not change anything; it appeared as

involuntary servitude because the harvest would go to the land owner as payments of the land

and farming equipment. Therefore, the freedman had no benefits to enter such systems since he

could not obtain his own land. Tenant farming was not so different from sharecropping apart

from, that the cultivator would rent the land and pay back the rent by giving a great proportion to

42
the landholder. More often than not, the planter was in no way capable to cultivate sufficient

harvest to pay off his entire debt and this caused a never ending cycle much like slavery (2).

It became obvious to African Americans that the politicians of that era would

not adjust their status apart from emancipating blacks sequentially to keep their labor force for

empowering the United States ‘economy the government had not offered any aid to the freedmen

for making real employment or essential skills for employment (Gabe ,76).

Much like economic challenge, political difficulties had a great share to

accomplish the legend of possessing equal rights under the law of the United States. This way

was paved legally through a constitutional amendment, the fifteenth amendment of 1870 which

guaranteed citizens the right to vote regardless of race or previous condition of servitude. This

amendment was faced with a great opposition from the confederate masters and white

southerners. The opponents of black suffrage drummed on the point that the unqualified freed

people were unfit for the vote. Even the delegates at the 1866 Georgia Freedmen’s Convention

could not agree to support universal suffrage in the face of black illiteracy (Richardson, 42).

The white southerners had made a terrible kind of a pressure on the African

Americans to leave the polls, in particular for the republican candidates. The reason was that

republicans were creating laws that gave blacks more civil and economic rights. This would

threaten the supremacy of southerners.

Richardson believed that the right to vote for the ex-slave was the logical

solution to the problem of protecting African-Americans as free laborers. But the enforcement of

black suffrage required a dramatic assumption of power by the federal government, and few

Northerners were willing to undertake such an expansion of government until they had totally

lost confidence in Southern whites’ good faith efforts to build a free labor in the south that would

work in harmony with the North (42).

43
 The right to vote became the critical step in protecting blacks’ civil liberties. It

would also be the first of their freedoms taken away. The African Americans were really in need

of such steps. Politically speaking, the vote might give the freedmen some of economic security

and allow a few of them to hold office; yet it did not make them equal with the white men or

protect them from racial discrimination. The black community remained inferior to that of white

because they were in the eyes of the white men an illiterate community unfit to practice such

privileges.

Since education was the major problem that left the black community inferior,

the freedmen determined to focus on education as a fundamental basis to escape from the

darkness of illiteracy to be proper citizens fit for all political and social performance. According

to. , in every part of the South, throughout the Reconstruction period schools, both day and night,

were overflowing to overload with people of all ages and circumstances; some being as far along

in age as sixty and seventy years. The ambition to secure an education was most recommendable

and encouraging. The idea, however, was too prevalent that as soon as one secured a little

education, in some unexplainable way, he would be free from most of the hardships of the world

and at any rate, could live without manual labor. There was a further feeling that a knowledge,

however little, of the Greek and Latin languages would make one a very superior human being,

something bordering almost on the supernatural (Booker T Washington, 1)

For seeking for equality, the freedmen were struggling to overcome their social,

political and economic problems in the reconstruction period, but they did not reach their dreams

because the white southerners fought to keep their supremacy by restricting to blacks their civil

rights by all the means even if they were guaranteed by legislations. At that stage, the white

southerners gathered themselves in violent groups aiming to set up a panic against the freedmen.

These actions of terror became a pressure on the politicians and government as a threat of

44
survival to both of the governments and reconstruction. This movement of violence was among

the great challenges of the African Americans in the Reconstruction Era.

3.1Violence in the South:

Reconstruction was the freedmen’s most tragic period in the American history.

After the end of the war, the white southerners organized in gangs and nightriders aimed to have

power over the freedmen in all the southern states. According to Eric Forner, “The pervasiveness

of violence reflected white determination to define in their own way the meaning of freedom and

their determinate resistance to black efforts to establish their autonomy” (425). Freedmen

understood the assault and the white riots, through whichever mean, for these vigilant mobs as

aggressive efforts to squeeze their newly won rights and to restrict the meaning of black’s

freedom.

Major White Riots During Reconstruction

Local states Year Number of the blacks killed

Memphis, Tennessee 1866 46

New Orleans, Louisiana 1866 40-50

Camilla, Georgia 1868 8-12

Opelousas, Louisiana 1868 27

Shreveport, Louisiana 1868 150-200

Eutaw, Alabama 1870 6

45
Laurens, south Carolina 1870 12

Meridien, Mississippi 1871 6

Colfax, Louisiana 1873 105

Trenton, Tennessee 1874 4

Vicksburg, Mississippi 1874 unknown

Clinton, Mississippi 1875 unknown

Hamburg, south Carolina 1876 unknown

The Ku Klux Klan1was among the terrorist organization that had a great impact on the

African Americans’ security in the south. In his famous book, The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi,

Newton, Michael thinks that this organization is symbolized as having had innocent beginnings

in a clandestine union created by six young white men in Pulaski, Tennessee, in the early

summer of 1866. These men were supposedly uninterested ex-Confederate soldiers seeking

laughter. Amusement was supposedly found in, among other things, dressing as ghosts and

setting out to terrify ex- slaves. But this amusement turned to a military organization using

violence operations for the interest of the democrats, the planting class; and all those who desired

the restoration of white supremacy (3).

1
- Ku Klux is a fanciful corruption of the Greek Kulos, or drinking-bowl, which indicates both that the founders

were men of some education and that the their purposes were not very sinister

46
 In accumulation to that, the Klan operated in rural areas where the freed

people included a minority or a small majority. The Klan intended to adjust the status of the

freedmen in the south that was represented through their infinite demands for unreal right,

although schools and churches were irregular targets for fire-raising. The vast majority of

violence became visible toward local leaders and against economically independent freedmen

(Forner, 428).

Among the goals of violent behavior was the re-establishment of the labor

regulation on white owned farms and plantation. Hannah Rosen wrote in her famous book, The

terror in the heart of freedom, That the organization put laws under the titles’ “I Am

Committee’’. It contained a list of laws that outlined what was fundamentally a slave code

without slavery point out that white men were to be employers and all black people -men,

women, and children- were to be laborers. Means of survival for African Americans other than

laboring on a white man’s farm were forbidden. All freed people were ordered to be in the

employ of a white person; black people were forbidden to employ other black people; and white

men were prohibited from allowing freed people not in their employ to squat on their land. Freed

people were warned stealing or bringing food and supplies from their employer to other freed

people because their punishment would be death. Also, ‘‘Running about late of nights shall be

strictly dealt with’’; thus, nighttime meetings that might allow organization for bettering working

conditions or sharing resources were prohibited. The list of rules ended (185).

47
Klansmen raid a cabin during Reconstruction (Newton, 17)

When the federal government passed the fifteenth amendment which gave the

freedmen the right to vote, the Klan reacted violently toward African Americans Michael

Newton supposed that according to members of the Klan, the “injured and demoralized” were

southern whites, destined to suffer in a world where blacks could vote (9). The Klan worked hard

to deprive them from the polls and put great pressure on African Americans to abandon voting

and not to practice other rights.

48
 Congress passed the Force Acts of 1870 and 1871 as a reaction to the murders

the Klan had committed. They enabled Federal troops to discontinue the slaughter of the Ku

Klux Klan (The Ordeal of the Reconstruction, 1).

Fazit

It came to view, that freedom which was given by the U.S. government to the

African Americans as a war reward, was far from having the original meaning of the word

“freedom”. Giving freedom to the freedmen and, by the same hand, depriving them from their

natural right such as education, security and self-determination, was just an indication of an

unclear and a contradictory vision of the U.S policy toward the African Americans in the post

emancipation period. Yet, the freedmen knew from the beginning that the way toward freedom

was not paved with flowers and roses, they knew that the struggle cost patience and ambition to

reach the sky of freedom and equality. For them, the Civil War and Reconstruction era planted

the seeds of freedom in a racist society aiming for a better harvest in the coming century.

49
Former slaves were stripped of federal protection against racist violence in the mid–1870s (Florida State

Archives).

50
Conclusion:

From the early days of servitude, African Americans and some of white

Abolitionists protested and fought for the legal and social rights of blacks’ minorities as

US citizens. They did not miss any opportunity to participate in great wars of the United

States in order to prove their loyalty and patriotism to their hometown .Finally, freedom

came with the coming of the Civil War. This war resulted into a great decision that

emancipated African Americans in1863. That decision did not affect the status of African

Americans only, but it also had a greater effect on the changing course of the war wherein

the black men participated side by side with the whites; the result was an amendment to the

constitution that emancipated all the U.S Slaves.

In spite of this, the south emerged from the Civil War shorn of some features;

the peculiar institution of slavery had gone but new strategies for reconstructing the new

south must be done. In Reconstruction, the Freedman was the central figure and the most

difficult problem was that more than four millions of colored people had in one way or

another become free before the end of the war. Emancipation, victory and the Thirteen

Amendment were a long waiting step for the redemption of African Americans. The newly

called freedmen had to prepare themselves to assume a new status in their hometown.

Many blacks thought that freedom meant no more work and they proceeded to

celebrate an endless freedom; others were led to believe that every black would be given

forty acres and a mule by the government, or that the property of their former masters would

be divided among them. Yet, after freedom the freedman had neither money nor property; it

is true that he was free from the old plantation system; but he had nothing except the dirty

path below his feet. The government created systems such as sharecropping and worked as a

mediator between the freedmen and the land owners. He was turned lost and hungry The

51
death among the freedmen from starvation, disease; and violence in the first two years of

freedom ran into tens of thousands as the black leader Frederick Douglass said: “the negro

was free from the individual master but a slave of the society” (U.S History Centre). These

words led to understand that Freedmen were still counted as slaves as much as this

conviction of their fatal servitude was still rooted in the southerner’s minds.

Emancipation changed the position of the freedmen legally rather than

socially or economically. Various laws and amendments were passed to preserve the legal

rights of blacks such as the Thirteen Amendments which had been added to the

constitution to guarantee slaves’ freedom, the fourteen Amendments to protect their civil

rights, and the Fifteen Amendment to assure them the vote. This process of legal protection

of the status of the freedmen enhanced was in Reconstruction era, wherein the federal

government continued in producing laws and Acts such as the Civil Right Act of 1866, the

enforcement Act of 1870, which threw the protection of the federal government over the

negro right to vote; the Ku Klux Klan act of 1872 and finally the Civil Right Act of 1875.

Few whites of the south were able to realize the implication of freedom or were

willing to accept anything approaching race equality. The “Negro” was still thought of as

an inferior being, incapable of real independence, impossible to teach. Some former

slaveholders tried honestly and with a little success to help the freedmen in adjusting

themselves to their new status. While the poor white and small farmers were determined to

keep the freedmen in their places by all means they have as tenant farmers or

sharecroppers. In addition to that, the southern states attempted to assure this by a series of

laws collectively known as Black Codes. These Codes aimed to restrict the freedmen right

in order to maintain the philosophy of the old south, where they would not find many

problems in managing the freedmen and preparing for new voluntary servitude systems.

52
 In that episode, the black achievements were enormous wherein the transition

from slave to free farmer was a long and painful one, made usually through government as

an intermediary .The Freedmen with the protection of the federal authority attempted to

build their own society based on their local autonomy to be free at last from the white

control. They reconstructed their families, pursued formal education, and created their

institutions. They also tried to vote and hold office as if they lived in democracy. But this

situation resulted into a great problem of separation that widened the gap between the two

races rather than integrated them.

Freedmen with the help of the federal government harvested end many gains

through the course of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era. The most important one was

“freedom”. But, this freedom was sooner restricted and bounded by the southerner’s policy

makers through their vagrancy laws and voluntary servitude systems planning to spoil African

Americans’ dreams and bring a miserable end to the story of reconstruction. It seemed that

Reconstruction failed to achieve its large goals in reconstructing the south, but in fact, it found

out the constitutional foundation for the civil rights movement of the mid twentieth century.

53
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Autobiography. 1901. http://bartleby.com/people/woshngtnBT/

57
 Tables :

1- African Americans in Office 1870–1876 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Suffrage in
Reconstruction Era

2- Acres per worker on white and black family James ,ciment .the atlas of the African Americans
cotton history .eddy carter smith .media project Inc.
NewYourk.2007.

3- African American Land Ownership in The James, ciment .the atlas of the African Americans
Rural Georgia ,1870’s history .eddy carter smith .media project Inc.
NewYourk.2007.

4-the Black Codes James ,ciment .the atlas of the African Americans
history .eddy carter smith .media project Inc.
NewYourk.2007.

James ,ciment .the atlas of the African Americans

history .eddy carter smith .media project Inc.
5-Major White Riots During Reconstruction NewYourk.2007.