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Of course, a large number were glad to return to the plantations and to agree with their old employers to work as labourers. In choosing their new names, the ex-slaves showed some good taste as well as ambition.
Making a new machine and sending out officials of duly ascertained fitness for a great work of social reform is no child's task; but this task was even harder, for a new central organization had to be fitted on a heterogeneous and confused but already existing system of relief and control of ex-slaves; and the agents available for this work must be sought for in an army still busy with war operations, men in the very nature of the case ill fitted for delicate social work, or among the questionable camp followers of an invading host.
The now ex-slaves had been liberated, not with the consent of their former owners, but by the power of the conqueror as a war measure, who not unnaturally insisted upon the right to declare absolutely the future status of these persons without consultation with or in any way by the intervention of their late owners.
Only turn this to good account and the whole country will be benefited and enriched, while the descendants of the ex-slaves themselves will remain contented and good citizens. To carry out this idea is certainly one of the greatest of enterprises to which social reformers in the New World have ever set their hand.
They were to hasten to their fields of work; seek gradually to close relief establishments, and make the destitute self-supporting; act as courts of law where there were no courts, or where Negroes were not recognized in them as free; establish the institution of marriage among ex-slaves, and keep records; see that freedmen were free to choose their employers, and help in making fair contracts for them; and finally, the circular said: "Simple good faith, for which we hope on all hands for those concerned in the passing away of slavery, will especially relieve the assistant commissioners in the discharge of their duties toward the freedmen, as well as promote the general welfare."
The legislation finally framed showed in its discriminatory features the combined influence of the old laws for free Negroes, the vagrancy laws of North and South for whites, the customs of slavery times, the British West Indies legislation for ex-slaves, and the regulations of the United States War and Treasury Departments and of the Freedmen's Bureau all modified and elaborated by the Southern whites.
Stephens went to Fisk and finished there. Mrs. Spight graduated from Union High School. We had all white teachers at first. Miss Sarah Henley used to teach with old ex-slaves where the Bethel A.M.E. Church is now. There wasn't no church there then just a little shanty. I was just five years old. My mother used to take me there and leave me, but she taught me herself at home.
Their home is fairly well furnished and clean in appearance. Phoebe is of slender stature, and is quite active in spite of the fact that she is nearing her nineties. Topic: Ex-slaves Muskingum County, District #2 BEN BROWN Ex-slave, 100 years Keen St., Zanesville, Ohio It wuz a tough life.
No one thought, at the time, that the ex-slaves could use the ballot intelligently or very effectively; but they did think that the possession of so great power by a great class in the nation would compel their fellows to educate this class to its intelligent use.
De overseer wuz poor white trash. His rules were you hed to be out on de plantation before daylight. Sometimes we hed to sit around on de fence to wait for daylight and we did not go in before dark. We go in bout one for meals. K. Osthimer, Author Aug 12, 1937 Folklore: Stories from Ex-Slaves Lucas County, District Nine Toledo, Ohio The Story of MRS. HANNAH DAVIDSON. Mrs.
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