After the Civil war, the former slaves envisioned a new era. A former slave
interviewed in the 1930s recalled:
One day a few negroes was sticking sticks in the ground when massa come up.
"What you niggers doing?" he asked. "We is staking off the land, Massa. The
Yankees say half of it is ourn. The massa never got mad. He just look
calmlike. "Listen, niggers," he said, "What's mine is mine and what's yours is
yours.
You're just as free as I and the missus, but don't go fooling around my
land. I have tried to be a good master to you. I have never been unfair. Now
if
you wants to stay, you are welcome to work for me. I'll pay you one-third the
crops you raise. But if you wants to go, you sees the gate.
The task of restoring the Union after the trauma of what Walt Whitman called
"that strange, sad war" would have been difficult and complex in any case.
The assassination of a beloved President made it harder still. An embittered
society, a revengeful Congress and a new President with Southern sympathies --
Andrew Johnson -- set the stage for a period of bitter dissension over the
political future of the South. In the Reconstruction era, two huge rebuilding
tasks had to be accomplished. The rebel states had to be brought back into
the structure of the national government -- and the shattered economy of the
South had to be rebuilt -- without its former advantage of slave labor. And so
a new battle unfolded, about the best means to accomplish these tasks.
Four million newly-freed people in the South could now go where they wished,
but they had no land and no shelter. Echoing their feelings, Frederick
Douglass said these freedmen were sent away empty handed, without money,
without
friends, and without a foot of land to stand upon. "Many felt that political
freedom, without economic assistance, would simply enable white landholders,
with the aid of various local laws, to reestablish bondage. This was,
generally, the position of the group in Congress that came to be known as
"radical
Republicans."
One of the most hotly contested issues was the question of confiscation of
Southern land. Since the slaves had tilled the soil for many years, argued the
"radicals," they had every right now to the land. However, many of these
politicians wanted more beside simple justice for the former slaves; they also
had a mind to punish the secessionists and remove the base of the Old South's
wealth and culture: the plantation system. They asserted that Rebel leaders
who had supported secession had no right to keep their land. Foremost among
Congressional leaders was Thaddeus Stevens, one of the leading radical
Republicans. Suggesting that 70,000 rebels owned 394,000,000 acres of land, it
seemed
only fitting to him that the freedmen be given their own lands. Since this
figure represented less than five per cent of white families, the vast
majority of Southerners would suffer little, but the freedmen would have an
opportunity to earn a living, free of the former plantation owners. According
to this
view, if the back of the plantation owner was to be broken, then he must be
relieved of the source of his power: land.
A small amount of confiscated land had already been given to the newly freed
slaves. Meeting with Black leaders, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and
General William Tecumseh Sherman had recommended that land be given to the
freedmen. In South Carolina and Georgia, forty acres each were given to more
than
40,000 freedmen. In Davis Bend, Mississippi, large tracts of confiscated land
were given to1,800 former slaves, who tilled their soil and made a handsome
profit, until President Andrew Johnson rescinded all such orders.
Congress, in its discussions on land reform in the South, did not support
any proposals of specific compensation in land. Some felt that this lack of
support for "Forty acres and a mule" spelled defeat for the entire
Reconstruction program. Some argued that protecting the political rights of
the freedmen
-- the right to vote, to own property and to hold office, etc., which were
guaranteed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments -- would suffice. Others
thought that the confiscation of land was a violation of property rights -- a
right many Congressmen felt was too sacred to tamper with. And there were
those
who thought that it was good for business not to give land to Black people,
for two strongly self-reinforcing reasons. One was the general white attitude
that they were an inferior class of being; the other was the convenience of a
ready supply of cheap labor.
That, in the end, is how it turned out. Although the Freedmen's Bureau
contributed somewhat to better the lot of Black people, their economic status
remained little changed. Many became sharecroppers.
Large and small landowners rented out part of their acreage for a return of
50% of their crop. Already in debt to local merchants, Blacks without the
ownership of land were to remain both poor and also deprived of many of their
civil rights. This lack of ownership, caused unattached feelings toward this
country, and basically created a black rebellion that has cost this country
trillions of dollars. Productivity was finally exported to places like China,
and the Housing market skyrocketed because a large percentage of the
population were forced to be non-property owners for centuries. This is the
Chicken
coming home to Roost. If they were given their 40 acres and a mule as
promised, this long due bank melt down would not have occured.
Background Questions:
1. How did the former slaves view President Lincoln?
2. How did some Congressional leaders view the President Lincoln?
3. What action was taken to give land to former slaves?
4. Why did many Republicans actively recruit Black voters after the
Civil War?
5. What is meant by "forty acres and a mule"?
6. To what degree did conditions change for Black people in the south
after the Civil War?
____________________________________
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