by Tom Brennan

Created on: August 14, 2011

Problems newly freed slaves faced during the Reconstruction

The problems of freemen had always been there as a daily reality in America. Being able to prove to deputies seeking runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad, even those who had been born in free families always were on the defensive. The Dred Scott decision made the situation even more complicated. The Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 opened up additional doors of confusion as slaves in the Confederate States that saw the Federal Armies moving forward fled to the Union lines seeking the freedom they had been promised. In many cases the Union generals were unsympathetic to the masses of escapees and fed them only by necessity and in at least one case abandoned a large group of pursuing Confederates. The term “contraband” was applied to the former slaves and they were “unpersons” legally, no longer slaves, but still not free.

The Reconstruction policies of the Johnson Administration had a harsh effect on former masters and slave alike. The Southern male population had suffered extreme casualties and those who had survived the war had serious medical problems from extreme dysentery to amputated limbs. The agricultural system had been wrecked by loss of draft animals, tools and property and crop damage. The industrial system was in ruins. The plantations were now without field workers to do the planting work and bands of homeless former slaves roamed the countryside seeking the previously accepted shelter and food. The new freemen and women had been cast into a world of providing for themselves which they had little grasp of and were vulnerable to more dangers than before. Many former slaves returned to the plantations and began to work for a wage or food and shelter. The voting franchise was guaranteed by legislation and the Freedmen's Bureau. The Bureau became a tool of vengeance from the Johnson Administration, wreaking retribution from the assassination of a more compassionate Lincoln. The Bureau in many ways re-set the balance of the South and created an attitude of resentment in the white population that gave strength to the Ku Klux Klan, founded by former Cavalry General Nathan Bedford Forest.

The former slaves had no literacy, education, experience or living skills outside their former servitude. They were easily manipulated by speculative “carpetbaggers” who saw only personal profit from the opportunities in the Reconstructed South. Many former slaves were elected to legislatures and were controlled by profit makers and manipulators. The antagonism towards former masters rose and what Lincoln has hoped would be an easier reconciliation and re-unification became a crisis that has endured in racism and poverty even today.

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