# What Happened to the Slaves After Slavery Ended

An episode of [Human History ASMR](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6793196842), 10 Oct 2026, 55 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75561051/what_happened_to_the_slaves_after_slavery_ended_human_voiced_no_ads.mp3



## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Imagine the moment in the year 1865 when a formerly
[0:06] Speaker 1: enslaved man like Jordan Anderson penned a letter to his
[0:11] Speaker 1: old master politely declining an offer to return. I get
[0:17] Speaker 1: $ 25 a month with victuals and clothing, and the children
[0:23] Speaker 1: go to school and are learning well. Anderson wrote of
[0:28] Speaker 1: his new life in Dayton, Ohio. With subtle humor, he
[0:33] Speaker 1: even asked for 32 years of back pay, totaling a
[0:39] Speaker 1: whopping $ 11, 680, before he would even consider returning to plantation work.
[0:47] Speaker 1: It's a pretty remarkable letter. It captures the profound transition
[0:51] Speaker 1: underway in the Deep South after the Civil War. Four
[0:55] Speaker 1: million enslaved individuals stood at the threshold of freedom. but
[1:02] Speaker 1: we're uncertain about what lay beyond. And so today, we're
[1:07] Speaker 1: going to find out what actually did lay beyond. We'll
[1:11] Speaker 1: talk about the lives of the freed slaves in the
[1:14] Speaker 1: Deep South during those uneasy years followed by the Civil War.
[1:19] Speaker 1: We'll focus on the states at the heart of the
[1:21] Speaker 1: former Confederacy, being Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, and
[1:28] Speaker 1: a few of their neighbours, to understand how emancipation unfolded
[1:32] Speaker 1: on the ground. It's going to be pretty perilous. Families
[1:39] Speaker 1: reunited after long separations, black schools and churches springing up,
[1:45] Speaker 1: and freedmen seizing their first opportunities to vote and even
[1:49] Speaker 1: hold office. Yet all these gains came alongside harsh realities,
[1:55] Speaker 1: Lacking land or capital, many freedmen fell into sharecropping and
[1:59] Speaker 1: tenant farming, arrangements that echoed slavery in everything and all
[2:04] Speaker 1: but name. After freedom, we worked on shares a while.
[2:11] Speaker 1: We couldn't make nothing, just overalls and something to eat.
[2:16] Speaker 1: Those were the words of Henry Blake of Arkansas, describing
[2:20] Speaker 1: how half the crop went to the white landowner. and
[2:24] Speaker 1: how debts kept black farmers bound to the soil. But politically,
[2:31] Speaker 1: the promise of liberation was met with ferocious white resistance.
[2:35] Speaker 1: Black codes, vigilante violence, and the rise of the Klan,
[2:41] Speaker 1: all aimed to keep freed people in a condition of helplessness.
[2:46] Speaker 1: But through it all, the freedmen and freedwomen of the
[2:49] Speaker 1: Deep South showed extraordinary resilience and initiative. They built new
[2:54] Speaker 1: lives for themselves, with a determination that future generations would
[2:59] Speaker 1: remember as quite heroic. So, in this talk, we'll balance
[3:03] Speaker 1: first-person accounts of former slaves with other contemporary sources to
[3:07] Speaker 1: paint a vivid picture of Reconstruction-era life. We'll try and
[3:12] Speaker 1: be as straightforward and scholarly as we can. But the
[3:15] Speaker 1: human stories of hope and hardship, the courage on all
[3:19] Speaker 1: the setbacks, I'm sure a bit of emotion will shine through.
[3:24] Speaker 1: By the end, I hope you'll understand how emancipation in
[3:27] Speaker 1: the Deep South was not just a single event, but
[3:30] Speaker 1: rather an unfolding struggle, as those free people sought to
[3:35] Speaker 1: turn newfound liberty into lasting prosperity, and eventually, equality. But
[3:44] Speaker 1: allow me to first welcome you to the channel. Well,
[3:48] Speaker 1: it's good to meet you all, if you're newcomers. For
[3:51] Speaker 1: those returning, good to see you again. Thank you to
[3:54] Speaker 1: those who supported on the Patreon and those who checked
[3:57] Speaker 1: out the merch store. And I invite you to like
[4:01] Speaker 1: the video, subscribe, and tell me where you're listening from.
[4:05] Speaker 1: Just leave a comment. Okay, well, with all that out
[4:09] Speaker 1: of the way, let's get on to the video. Nice
[4:14] Speaker 1: and relaxed. And so the story starts in 1865, when
[4:21] Speaker 1: Union Victory bought Emancipation The news spread like wildfire across
[4:26] Speaker 1: plantations in the deep south. For the men and women
[4:30] Speaker 1: emerging from bondage, the end of slavery was met with
[4:33] Speaker 1: a mixture of jubilation and anxiety. Many left the plantations immediately,
[4:41] Speaker 1: some in joyous processions down dusty roads, others in quiet
[4:45] Speaker 1: determination to find family members sold away years before. In
[4:51] Speaker 1: these early months of freedom, the formerly enslaved tested the
[4:55] Speaker 1: boundaries of their liberty. They adopted new surnames, often choosing Freeman,
[5:02] Speaker 1: or the names of their heroes like Lincoln, signalling a
[5:06] Speaker 1: break from their enslavers' identities. They set their own work schedules,
[5:11] Speaker 1: no longer driven by the overseers' lash, but perhaps most importantly,
[5:16] Speaker 1: thousands took to the roads in search of those long-lost
[5:19] Speaker 1: loved ones. Family reunification was an urgent priority. A freedman
[5:25] Speaker 1: named Hawkins Wilson, separated from his sisters decades earlier, wrote
[5:30] Speaker 1: poignantly to the Freedmen's Bureau in 1867, I am anxious
[5:37] Speaker 1: to learn about my sisters, from whom I have been
[5:40] Speaker 1: separated many years. I have never heard from them since
[5:44] Speaker 1: I left Virginia twenty-four years ago. I am in hopes
[5:47] Speaker 1: that they are still living. Letters like Wilson's along with
[5:53] Speaker 1: hundreds of information-wanted ads placed in newspapers, reveal the deep
[5:59] Speaker 1: yearning of freed people to rebuild family ties broken by
[6:03] Speaker 1: the oppressive system of slavery. In this chaotic window of
[6:09] Speaker 1: freedom's dawn, the federal government stepped in to offer guidance
[6:14] Speaker 1: and support. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands,
[6:20] Speaker 1: simply known as the Freedmen's Bureau, began its operations in
[6:24] Speaker 1: the spring of 1865, certainly not wasting any time in
[6:27] Speaker 1: the wake of the Union victory. Tasked with assisting in
[6:32] Speaker 1: the transition from slavery to freedom, the Bureau tried to
[6:37] Speaker 1: address the basic and urgent needs of the freed people.
[6:43] Speaker 1: It provided emergency food, shelter and medical care to destitute
[6:48] Speaker 1: freedmen and refugees. Bureau agents helped African Americans locate relatives
[6:56] Speaker 1: and legalize marriages that had been informally celebrated under slavery. Indeed,
[7:03] Speaker 1: before the war, enslaved people could not marry legally. Did
[7:07] Speaker 1: you know that? So the Bureau performed numerous marriage ceremonies
[7:14] Speaker 1: for couples who desired that formal recognition on paper. The
[7:20] Speaker 1: Bureau also established rudimentary courts to give the freed people
[7:24] Speaker 1: a measure of legal protection, at least in theory. Agents
[7:30] Speaker 1: served as advocates for black citizens in local disputes, and
[7:35] Speaker 1: they always saw labor contracts between freedmen and planters to
[7:39] Speaker 1: try to ensure some modicum of fairness. But all these efforts, however,
[7:46] Speaker 1: unfolded amid tremendous uncertainty. and with that uncertainty came resistance.
[7:56] Speaker 1: For the freedmen and women themselves, the first decisions of
[8:00] Speaker 1: freedom were often the hardest. Should they stay, or should
[8:05] Speaker 1: they go? In Mississippi and Alabama, many freedpeople initially fled
[8:11] Speaker 1: plantations to nearby towns or union camps, eager to assert
[8:16] Speaker 1: their independence. One union officer in Georgia said, observed that
[8:21] Speaker 1: upon emancipation freed slaves exhibited a childlike excitement. They attended
[8:28] Speaker 1: mass meetings, parades, and church services celebrating their newfound deliverance.
[8:35] Speaker 1: One can hardly blame them for being overjoyed at the news.
[8:40] Speaker 1: Yet practical concerns soon tempered the celebrations. In the old
[8:48] Speaker 1: system they had accommodations They had food. They had water.
[8:56] Speaker 1: Now they didn't have it. So how would they eat?
[9:00] Speaker 1: Where would they work? And where would they live? Of course,
[9:05] Speaker 1: no one taught them how to seek out these things.
[9:09] Speaker 1: So people just didn't know what to do. Few freed
[9:13] Speaker 1: families owned any property, of course. And most had little
[9:18] Speaker 1: more than the clothes on their backs. and that includes
[9:22] Speaker 1: no tools to show up and sell your labor. Some planters,
[9:26] Speaker 1: desperate to retain their labor force, persuaded freed people to
[9:30] Speaker 1: remain on their land with promises of wages or shares
[9:35] Speaker 1: of the crop. Others attempted brute intimidation. Across the Deep
[9:41] Speaker 1: South in 1865, there were reports of planters refusing to
[9:44] Speaker 1: announce emancipation at all. or chasing black families off their
[9:49] Speaker 1: land at gunpoint if they tried to leave. In this
[9:56] Speaker 1: uncertain environment, the Freedmen's Bureau functioned as an intermediary bureau
[10:02] Speaker 1: officials travelled to plantations to announce that slavery was over
[10:07] Speaker 1: in no uncertain terms and to encourage planters to hire
[10:11] Speaker 1: their former slaves for wages they posted notices that freedmen
[10:16] Speaker 1: should be treated and paid as free labourers though such
[10:21] Speaker 1: directives often went unenforced, especially in the early days. The
[10:27] Speaker 1: Bureau urged freed people to return to work for the
[10:30] Speaker 1: time being, reasoning that idleness could invite white retaliation or
[10:36] Speaker 1: even starvation. This advice was not always welcome to the
[10:40] Speaker 1: freed people, who felt they had already laboured for their
[10:44] Speaker 1: whole lives and got nothing. As one group of black
[10:48] Speaker 1: Louisianans protested in 1865, quote, We had laboured long enough
[10:53] Speaker 1: for nothing, and have now deserved something for ourselves. Yeah,
[10:59] Speaker 1: fair enough. Their plea underscored a certain truth. Emancipation was
[11:05] Speaker 1: not just about personal freedom, but it was also about
[11:10] Speaker 1: economic independence. And that was going to be a whole
[11:15] Speaker 1: new fight. But despite many obstacles, freedmen and women worked
[11:24] Speaker 1: tirelessly to rebuild their personal lives on the foundation of
[11:27] Speaker 1: their newfound freedom. Family stood at the centre of this effort.
[11:33] Speaker 1: Under slavery, spouses, children and siblings had been routinely torn
[11:38] Speaker 1: apart by either forced migration or sale. Now, recently freed
[11:46] Speaker 1: people embarked on the difficult journeys hoping to reconnect with
[11:50] Speaker 1: their relatives. They scoured the countryside and neighbouring states, following
[11:56] Speaker 1: any lead they could get. It was common to see
[11:59] Speaker 1: black men and women walking miles along southern roads inquiring
[12:04] Speaker 1: at every farm or contraband camp for a familiar name.
[12:09] Speaker 1: Churches and Freedmen's Bureau officers became information hubs where people
[12:14] Speaker 1: posted inquiries. Newspapers such as the Southwestern Christian Advocate in
[12:19] Speaker 1: New Orleans ran the Lost Friends column, filled with heart-rending ads.
[12:26] Speaker 1: A typical notice from 1867 might read, Information Wanted of
[12:31] Speaker 1: My Son, James, about sixteen years old, last seen on
[12:35] Speaker 1: the auction block of New Orleans in 1859. Any news
[12:39] Speaker 1: of him would be thankfully received by his mother, Sarah.
[12:44] Speaker 1: Scores of such advertisements circulated, testifying to both the trauma
[12:48] Speaker 1: of familial separation and the hope that freedom brought a
[12:52] Speaker 1: chance to heal those deep wounds. The Freedmen's Bureau assisted
[12:57] Speaker 1: in opening mail registers to forward letters between separated kin,
[13:02] Speaker 1: and by offering free transportation in some cases to reunite families.
[13:09] Speaker 1: And slowly, many husbands found many wives Many sons found
[13:15] Speaker 1: many mothers, many daughters, many fathers. Parents discovered the fates
[13:21] Speaker 1: of those they thought were lost to them. Each reunion,
[13:24] Speaker 1: a wife stepping off a bureau train to meet a
[13:27] Speaker 1: husband she hadn't seen in a decade, or a father
[13:30] Speaker 1: embracing a daughter, ripped away from him, sold as a child,
[13:35] Speaker 1: marked a personal triumph of freedom. And marriage became another
[13:41] Speaker 1: cornerstone of the new black society. Legal marriage had been
[13:45] Speaker 1: denied under slavery. Enslavers recognized unions, but only informally. So
[13:51] Speaker 1: formal weddings surged after the war. Freed couples flocked to
[13:56] Speaker 1: bureau offices and local courthouses to get marriage licenses. In Mississippi,
[14:02] Speaker 1: one bureau agent reported that freedmen were perfectly frantic to
[14:07] Speaker 1: have their marriages legally sanctioned, believing it vital for the
[14:11] Speaker 1: dignity and security of their families. By one estimate, the
[14:15] Speaker 1: Bureau performed or recorded tens of thousands of marriages across
[14:18] Speaker 1: the South during Reconstruction. These ceremonies carried enormous significance. They
[14:25] Speaker 1: allowed husbands to claim rights over their wives and children,
[14:28] Speaker 1: and that protected them from being taken away. But they
[14:32] Speaker 1: also provided wives the lawful status that they had been denied.
[14:37] Speaker 1: Freed people often chose new surnames as they married, a
[14:41] Speaker 1: public assertion of family identity that owners had long refused
[14:45] Speaker 1: to recognize. In one moving example, a North Carolina couple
[14:50] Speaker 1: who had been separated and forced to marry others during slavery,
[14:55] Speaker 1: reunited in freedom and legally remarried, a testament to black
[14:59] Speaker 1: families' perseverance through unspeakable hardships. So now, with families taking shape,
[15:08] Speaker 1: freed people also built communities that became havens of support
[15:12] Speaker 1: and cultural life Churches were among the first institutions established.
[15:18] Speaker 1: During slavery, black Christians in the Deep South had mostly
[15:22] Speaker 1: been forced to worship under white supervision, often in the
[15:25] Speaker 1: gallery pews of white churches, or in secret bush meetings.
[15:32] Speaker 1: Emancipation brought a flowering of independent black churches, especially the
[15:36] Speaker 1: Baptist and Methodist congregations. Across Georgia and South Carolina, for instance,
[15:42] Speaker 1: freedmen left white churches en masse and founded their own,
[15:47] Speaker 1: sometimes meeting in barns or former slave pens, in which
[15:52] Speaker 1: they could construct their own simple wooden chapels. And the church,
[15:57] Speaker 1: of course, became the centre of black communities, a place
[16:01] Speaker 1: not only of worship but of education, political gathering and
[16:05] Speaker 1: mutual aid. Black ministers, who had been community leaders even
[16:10] Speaker 1: under slavery, assumed their greater prominence in freedom. They preached
[16:15] Speaker 1: messages of liberation and self-determination, and many also took up
[16:21] Speaker 1: roles in politics and education. The spirituals sung in slave
[16:27] Speaker 1: quarters now resounded in open-air camp meetings attended by the thousands.
[16:33] Speaker 1: In these early years, religion and community were deeply intertwined.
[16:39] Speaker 1: They gave the freed people moral strength and also practical organization.
[16:47] Speaker 1: One cannot overstate the hunger formerly enslaved people had for education.
[16:53] Speaker 1: To learn to read and write, long seen as privileges
[16:57] Speaker 1: of the free, was an urgent aspiration for the freedmen's generation.
[17:03] Speaker 1: Adults who had laboured in the fields by day now
[17:06] Speaker 1: begged for night classes. Children who had been forced to
[17:09] Speaker 1: carry cotton sacks now clutched spelling books. As one former
[17:15] Speaker 1: slave later remembered, it was a whole race trying to
[17:19] Speaker 1: get to school for the first time. The Freedmen's Bureau,
[17:25] Speaker 1: Northern Missionary Societies, and black communities themselves collaborated to set
[17:30] Speaker 1: up schools across the South, By the end of 1865,
[17:35] Speaker 1: more than 90,000 former slaves were enrolled as students in
[17:38] Speaker 1: Friedman's schools, with attendance rates around 80%. And that's a
[17:45] Speaker 1: pretty shocking achievement in such a short time, one must admit.
[17:51] Speaker 1: An 1866 illustration depicts a classroom for Friedman in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
[17:59] Speaker 1: In the scene, dozens of African-American students of all ages
[18:02] Speaker 1: crowd the benches, eagerly holding their primers, while a white
[18:08] Speaker 1: teacher stands in front of the class. Freedmen's schools like
[18:12] Speaker 1: this sprang up throughout the Deep South, often started by
[18:16] Speaker 1: black communities themselves with aid from the Freedmen's Bureau. Reading
[18:22] Speaker 1: and writing were more than practical skills. They were symbols
[18:26] Speaker 1: of liberation. At first, most of the teachers were volunteers
[18:32] Speaker 1: from the North, missionaries, Quakers, and former Union soldiers' wives.
[18:39] Speaker 1: But black teachers soon joined the ranks, many of them
[18:43] Speaker 1: products of the very schools established between 1865 and 1866.
[18:47] Speaker 1: In churches and makeshift schoolhouses, these pioneers taught the ABCs
[18:53] Speaker 1: and basic arithmetic. Their lessons also imparted values of discipline
[18:58] Speaker 1: and self-reliance that the freed people believed would finally elevate
[19:03] Speaker 1: their race. Friedman's Bureau reports from Alabama and Mississippi in
[19:10] Speaker 1: 1867 marvel at how children and grandparents sat together in class,
[19:15] Speaker 1: how students walked miles each day to attend. And the
[19:19] Speaker 1: progress was rapid. Within a few years, literacy rates among
[19:23] Speaker 1: southern blacks began to climb for the first time. Of course,
[19:28] Speaker 1: There was white opposition to black education, and it was
[19:31] Speaker 1: quite fierce. Arsonists and mobs targeted black schools, and some
[19:39] Speaker 1: teachers rather were beaten or killed by vigilantes, whose all-black
[19:43] Speaker 1: literacy is a threat. Even so, by 1870, the founding
[19:50] Speaker 1: of the public school system, open to African Americans, had
[19:55] Speaker 1: been laid in many Deep South states, largely due to
[19:59] Speaker 1: black-led Reconstruction movements. The ardent pursuit of education was one
[20:03] Speaker 1: of the clearest successes of the post-Civil War years, and
[20:07] Speaker 1: it gave rise to a new generation of African-American leaders.
[20:15] Speaker 1: But of all the challenges facing freed people, economic survival
[20:20] Speaker 1: was perhaps the most formidable and immediate. Upon getting their freedom,
[20:26] Speaker 1: many families had nothing but their own labor to sustain them.
[20:31] Speaker 1: They hungered for land of their own, a dream encapsulated
[20:34] Speaker 1: in the famous but ultimately unfulfilled phrase, 40 acres and
[20:39] Speaker 1: a mule. In early 1865, Union General William T. Sherman
[20:46] Speaker 1: had issued the Special Field Order No. 15, temporarily allocating
[20:51] Speaker 1: abandoned coastal land in Georgia and South Carolina to freedmen
[20:55] Speaker 1: in 40-acre plots. Roughly 40,000 freed people settled on this
[21:00] Speaker 1: land that year, building high hopes that they would become
[21:04] Speaker 1: independent farmers. And indeed, a committee of black ministers in
[21:08] Speaker 1: Savannah told Sherman that for their people, the way we
[21:12] Speaker 1: can best take care of ourselves is to have land. However,
[21:18] Speaker 1: these hopes met a harsh reversal. President Andrew Johnson, upon
[21:24] Speaker 1: taking office, ordered nearly all confiscated or abandoned lands returned
[21:30] Speaker 1: to their pre-war owners in late 1865. The freedmen who
[21:35] Speaker 1: had briefly tasted land ownership were promptly evicted from plantations
[21:41] Speaker 1: that the Union forces had handed them just months before.
[21:46] Speaker 1: One can understand how frustrating this would have been. On
[21:51] Speaker 1: Edisto Island in South Carolina, a group of freedmen who
[21:55] Speaker 1: had cultivated land under Sherman's order wrote a moving petition
[21:59] Speaker 1: when they were told to return the property to their
[22:01] Speaker 1: former enslavers. We were promised homesteads, they protested in October 1865.
[22:11] Speaker 1: and now the good and just government will not take
[22:16] Speaker 1: us from all this right. One freedman, articulating the feelings
[22:21] Speaker 1: of many, said to his former master, The man who
[22:26] Speaker 1: tied me to the tree and gave me thirty-nine lashes,
[22:31] Speaker 1: and who will not let me stay in his empty hut,
[22:33] Speaker 1: except I will do his planting and be satisfied with
[22:36] Speaker 1: his price, that man I cannot well forgive. The Edisto
[22:42] Speaker 1: petitioners begged for the chance to purchase and keep their
[22:46] Speaker 1: land that their sweat had cultivated, imploring, landless, homeless, vote-less,
[22:54] Speaker 1: we can only pray to God and hope for his help.
[22:57] Speaker 1: But despite their pleas, the federal government's policy favoured restoring
[23:02] Speaker 1: land to ex-Confederates to speed up sectional reconciliation. And as
[23:08] Speaker 1: a result, by 1866, most freed people in the Deep
[23:13] Speaker 1: South remained without land, once again forced to work for
[23:19] Speaker 1: others if they were to survive. With plantation owners retaining
[23:25] Speaker 1: their property, a new labor system had to emerge. Neither
[23:30] Speaker 1: planters nor freedmen could turn back the clock on slavery,
[23:34] Speaker 1: everybody knew that, but both sought to shape post-war labor
[23:38] Speaker 1: to their advantage. In the immediate aftermath of the emancipation,
[23:43] Speaker 1: that first year, from 1865 to 1866, many areas saw
[23:48] Speaker 1: attempts to institute yearly labor contracts. Planters, often through black
[23:54] Speaker 1: codes passed by state legislatures, tried to mandate that freed
[23:59] Speaker 1: people sign contracts by which they agreed to work for
[24:02] Speaker 1: a white employer, and that was usually their former master.
[24:06] Speaker 1: A year-long contract at paltry wages. I'm sure it all
[24:13] Speaker 1: seemed very familiar to them. For example, Mississippi's notorious Black
[24:18] Speaker 1: Code of 1865 required that, quote, all freedmen with no
[24:24] Speaker 1: lawful employment or business are deemed vagrants, essentially making it
[24:29] Speaker 1: a crime to be unemployed. Believe it or not, Now,
[24:35] Speaker 1: those who did not sign labour contracts could be arrested
[24:39] Speaker 1: and forced into unpaid labour on public works, or even
[24:43] Speaker 1: rented out to planters. Now, forced into unpaid labour. There's
[24:49] Speaker 1: another word for that, and it starts with S. Good Lord. Well,
[24:58] Speaker 1: the black codes across the Deep South. also often prohibited
[25:03] Speaker 1: black people from owning firearms limiting their ability to rent
[25:09] Speaker 1: land in cities and set up harsh penalties for any
[25:13] Speaker 1: insubordination these laws were a clear attempt to reinstate white
[25:17] Speaker 1: control over black labor and mobility it's obvious by anyone's
[25:22] Speaker 1: definition and surprise surprise, Friedman fiercely resisted such measures They
[25:31] Speaker 1: refused to sign contracts that resembled slavery by another name,
[25:35] Speaker 1: especially those that stipulated gang labor, whipping as discipline, believe
[25:40] Speaker 1: it or not, they still had that in the contracts,
[25:42] Speaker 1: and restrictions on movements. Under pressure from the radical Republicans
[25:47] Speaker 1: in Congress, outraged by the black cones, the Federal Military
[25:53] Speaker 1: and Freedmen's Bureau intervened in 1866 to avoid the most
[25:57] Speaker 1: oppressive contracts. Congress's Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the
[26:04] Speaker 1: 14th Amendment were, in part, reactions to these black codes,
[26:09] Speaker 1: aiming to establish that black Americans had equal protection under
[26:13] Speaker 1: the law. But still, the question remained. The question on
[26:19] Speaker 1: everyone's mind was on what terms would freed people work
[26:23] Speaker 1: the land that had once been worked by them as slaves? So,
[26:31] Speaker 1: Over the later 1860s, a compromised labour system known as
[26:35] Speaker 1: sharecropping took root across much of the Deep South. It
[26:40] Speaker 1: evolved as a sort of middle ground, albeit a pretty
[26:44] Speaker 1: inequitable one, between Plander's desire for a submissive labour force
[26:50] Speaker 1: and the freedman's quest for autonomy. Instead of working under
[26:55] Speaker 1: an overseer for a daily wage, which freed people distrusted
[26:59] Speaker 1: often with A damn good reason. A family would lease
[27:03] Speaker 1: a plot of land from a large planter. This family
[27:07] Speaker 1: would farm that parcel independently and then pay the land
[27:11] Speaker 1: over a share of the crop at the harvest time,
[27:13] Speaker 1: typically a third or maybe a half. In theory, this
[27:20] Speaker 1: arrangement appealed to both sides. Planters got their land cultivated
[27:24] Speaker 1: without paying cash up front and freedmen got a degree
[27:27] Speaker 1: of independence in their daily work. By 1870, sharecropping had
[27:32] Speaker 1: become the dominant labour arrangement for cotton and rice production
[27:36] Speaker 1: in many Deep South states. However, the reality of it was, surprise, surprise,
[27:44] Speaker 1: after Narsch, lacking seed, tools, or mule teams, freedmen usually
[27:51] Speaker 1: had to borrow these necessities from the landowner, and guess what?
[27:56] Speaker 1: It was all at steep interest. Even for that, or
[28:00] Speaker 1: you had to agree to plant a larger share of
[28:02] Speaker 1: the cash crops like cotton instead of food. This led
[28:08] Speaker 1: to many debt cycles that trapped farmers. Henry Blake's recollection
[28:13] Speaker 1: of sharecropping vividly captures its pitfalls. He said, When we
[28:19] Speaker 1: worked on the shares, we couldn't make nothing, just overalls
[28:24] Speaker 1: and something to eat. Half went to the other man,
[28:27] Speaker 1: a man that didn't know how to count, would always lose.
[28:32] Speaker 1: They never give you any details. They just say you
[28:35] Speaker 1: owe so much. According to Blake, planters kept the books
[28:41] Speaker 1: in such a way that by the end of the
[28:43] Speaker 1: year many black families were told they owed more than
[28:46] Speaker 1: they had actually earned. And guess what? That bound them
[28:51] Speaker 1: to land for another year. Even those who could read
[28:57] Speaker 1: and keep an account might be cheated as the landowner
[29:01] Speaker 1: controlled the weighing of cotton and the pricing. Sharecroppers were
[29:05] Speaker 1: often kept in constant debt, as situation plantation owners secured
[29:11] Speaker 1: by advancing supplies on credit and then deducting those costs
[29:15] Speaker 1: with interest from the sharecropper's portion. As Blake put it plainly,
[29:21] Speaker 1: you had to take the white man's word. Anything you wanted,
[29:25] Speaker 1: you could get it if you were a good hand.
[29:29] Speaker 1: But you better not try to leave and get caught.
[29:32] Speaker 1: They'd keep you in debt. They were sharp. The sharecropping
[29:37] Speaker 1: system also perpetuated a social dynamic. reminiscent of slavery. While
[29:43] Speaker 1: day-to-day farming life was under the freed people's control, the
[29:46] Speaker 1: landowners' authority loomed large. Many contracts forbade sharecroppers from selling
[29:51] Speaker 1: crops to anyone except the landowner, or leaving the plantation
[29:56] Speaker 1: without permission. If a black tenant accumulated debt, local laws,
[30:02] Speaker 1: and sometimes contract terms, gave the landowner a lien on
[30:06] Speaker 1: the next year's crop, binding the sharecropper to the farm
[30:11] Speaker 1: until the debt was paid. So in practice, it pretty
[30:16] Speaker 1: much meant that a poor harvest or dishonest accounting could
[30:21] Speaker 1: condemn a family to permanent peonage. It doesn't sound very fair,
[30:26] Speaker 1: doesn't it? If a sharecropper somehow managed to produce a surplus,
[30:32] Speaker 1: the credit system and low cotton prices usually left very
[30:36] Speaker 1: little profit. Over time, an entire regional economy could sink
[30:40] Speaker 1: into poverty. By the 1870s and 80s, vast numbers of
[30:45] Speaker 1: black and many white farmers in the South were sharecropping
[30:49] Speaker 1: on land that they did not even own, living on
[30:53] Speaker 1: credit between harvests. It was a bitter irony that Freedom's
[30:57] Speaker 1: first generations often found themselves still economically subservient on the
[31:01] Speaker 1: same soil they had toiled as slaves in living memory.
[31:07] Speaker 1: One observer in 1868 noted that the black farm labourer
[31:11] Speaker 1: has a homestead in name, but not in fact, for
[31:16] Speaker 1: it is really a part of his employer's plantation. Freed people,
[31:21] Speaker 1: of course, they knew the system was unjust. It was
[31:25] Speaker 1: hard not to notice. and some did manage to negotiate
[31:29] Speaker 1: for slightly better terms. For instance, a smaller share to
[31:36] Speaker 1: the owner if they provided their own mule, or to
[31:40] Speaker 1: become tenant farmers paying cash rent, that's a step above sharecropping.
[31:46] Speaker 1: A small minority even saved enough to buy their own land.
[31:50] Speaker 1: In most of the Deep South, however, black land ownership
[31:53] Speaker 1: remained elusive for years to come, By 1880, a significant
[31:57] Speaker 1: majority of black farmers in states like Mississippi and South
[32:00] Speaker 1: Carolina were still tenant farmers or sharecroppers rather than independent landowners.
[32:09] Speaker 1: And so, economic struggle was not the only challenge in
[32:13] Speaker 1: the fields. Planters and white vigilantes used violence and intimidation
[32:18] Speaker 1: to enforce labor discipline. Throughout the late 1860s, reports abounded
[32:24] Speaker 1: of planters, gangs, sometimes the very precursors of the Ku
[32:28] Speaker 1: Klux Klan, riding around at night to scare black labourers
[32:33] Speaker 1: into staying put. Henry Blake recalled that just after the war,
[32:38] Speaker 1: we had to get in before night two. If you didn't,
[32:42] Speaker 1: the Ku Klux would drive you in. They would whip
[32:46] Speaker 1: you if they could catch you out in the night time.
[32:51] Speaker 1: Dubbed pat-a-rollers from the old slave patrols, These groups sought
[32:56] Speaker 1: to terrorize freed people into compliance. Blake noted that such
[33:00] Speaker 1: harassment continued for about ten years after the war, until
[33:04] Speaker 1: enough of the vigilantes were killed up by federal troops
[33:07] Speaker 1: or armed black self-defense that the nightly raids subsisted. In
[33:13] Speaker 1: some cases, confrontations over labor turned deadly. Black workers who
[33:18] Speaker 1: tried to leave a plantation to seek better terms elsewhere
[33:21] Speaker 1: might be assaulted or even lynched. Law enforcement, often in
[33:27] Speaker 1: the hands of ex-Confederates, rarely intervened on behalf of black victims.
[33:33] Speaker 1: And despite these dangers, countless freedmen bravely asserted their right
[33:37] Speaker 1: to mobility and better employment. They voted with their feet,
[33:44] Speaker 1: by moving when cheated or abused, contributing to a gradual
[33:48] Speaker 1: diversification of black labor. Some found work in railroad construction,
[33:54] Speaker 1: lumber camps, some women as washerwomen or barbers in towns.
[34:01] Speaker 1: But for the vast majority in the Deep South, agriculture
[34:04] Speaker 1: was really the only option for them, and sharecropping was
[34:09] Speaker 1: the framework from within they pursued the fruits of freedom.
[34:17] Speaker 1: But emancipation not only liberated the body, it eventually empowered
[34:22] Speaker 1: the political voice of freedmen. After the Civil War, one
[34:27] Speaker 1: of the most revolutionary changes in the Deep South was
[34:31] Speaker 1: the entry of African-American men into public life. In the
[34:36] Speaker 1: immediate aftermath of the war, this political participation was minimal.
[34:41] Speaker 1: Black people organized mass meetings and conventions to demand rights,
[34:46] Speaker 1: but former slaves could not yet vote and held no
[34:49] Speaker 1: office in the southern states. They began to change all
[34:54] Speaker 1: of that with Congressional Reconstruction. By 1867, Congress had taken
[35:00] Speaker 1: control of Reconstruction from President Johnson, and the Reconstruction Acts
[35:06] Speaker 1: of 1867-68 granted the vote to black men in the
[35:10] Speaker 1: former Confederacy, while of course temporarily disenfranchising many ex-Confederate leaders.
[35:17] Speaker 1: In the Deep South, with its large black population, there
[35:22] Speaker 1: was an unprecedented experiment taking place in biracial democracy. Turnout
[35:28] Speaker 1: among freedmen was astonishingly high whenever they had the opportunity
[35:32] Speaker 1: to vote. As early as 1867, equal rights leagues and
[35:37] Speaker 1: political clubs organized by black communities were busy holding meetings
[35:41] Speaker 1: across the South, instructing freedmen on the mechanics of voting
[35:46] Speaker 1: and the importance of solidarity. Freed people viewed the vote
[35:52] Speaker 1: as a safeguard for their freedom, a means to enact
[35:55] Speaker 1: laws and policies that would protect their rights against any
[35:58] Speaker 1: resurgence of slavery-like conditions. The urgency and excitement were of
[36:04] Speaker 1: course palpable. Contemporary accounts describe how black men, many of
[36:09] Speaker 1: them former slaves, lined up at voter registration offices in
[36:13] Speaker 1: 1867 with a mixture of pride and determination. As Reconstruction
[36:22] Speaker 1: governments were formed in the Deep South states, African Americans
[36:26] Speaker 1: began to hold public office in significant numbers. During the
[36:30] Speaker 1: late 1860s and early 1870s, some 2,000 freedmen held positions
[36:37] Speaker 1: of public authority in the South, ranging from local officers
[36:41] Speaker 1: like Justice of the Peace or Sheriff to seats in
[36:45] Speaker 1: the state legislatures and even the U.S. Congress. In Mississippi,
[36:51] Speaker 1: which had a black population majority, voters elected several black
[36:56] Speaker 1: statewide officials and sent the first African-American senator in U.S. history,
[37:01] Speaker 1: Hiram Revels, to Washington in 1870. Georgia's legislature in 1868
[37:08] Speaker 1: included dozens of black representatives, though white Democrats later expelled
[37:14] Speaker 1: them until federal intervention reinstated them. South Carolina's legislature became
[37:21] Speaker 1: the first in American history with a black majority, led
[37:25] Speaker 1: by Speaker of the House Robert Smalls, himself a formerly
[37:30] Speaker 1: enslaved man, who famously seized a Confederate ship during the war.
[37:36] Speaker 1: Not bad. Well, these were extraordinary developments. Years earlier, these
[37:42] Speaker 1: individuals had been considered property, and now they were making
[37:46] Speaker 1: the laws Their presence was a testament to both the
[37:49] Speaker 1: possibilities opened up by emancipation and the leadership that emerged
[37:54] Speaker 1: from within the black community itself. Freedmen in office typically
[37:59] Speaker 1: focused on securing the rights and well-beings of their constituents.
[38:04] Speaker 1: They advocated for public education, economic opportunity and equal justice
[38:09] Speaker 1: under the law. Just for an example, black legislators were
[38:14] Speaker 1: instrumental in creating the first statewide public school systems in
[38:18] Speaker 1: the Deep South. They pushed for laws to prohibit racial
[38:21] Speaker 1: discrimination in transportation and public accommodations, with some success, as
[38:29] Speaker 1: in Louisiana for a time. Of course, that fight would
[38:33] Speaker 1: continue well into the 20th century. Importantly, black political leaders
[38:38] Speaker 1: often worked in alliance with white republicans, Derisively labelled carpetbaggers
[38:45] Speaker 1: and scallywags by opponents. Scallywag, I haven't heard that word
[38:49] Speaker 1: in a while. Of course, this is all to advance
[38:52] Speaker 1: a reconstruction agenda. But their gains prompted bitter opposition. Most
[38:58] Speaker 1: white southerners, especially former confederates and conservative planters, could not
[39:04] Speaker 1: countenance black political power. They saw the political elevation of
[39:08] Speaker 1: former slaves as an inversion of the social order. and
[39:13] Speaker 1: reacted with outrage and aggression. The backlash was swift and violent.
[39:19] Speaker 1: Supremacist organizations, the most infamous being the Klan, emerged to
[39:23] Speaker 1: restore the white, democratic control through terrorism. Founded in Tennessee
[39:30] Speaker 1: in 1866, the Klan spread into Deep South states by
[39:35] Speaker 1: 1868 and 1869, operating as a clandestine armed wing of
[39:39] Speaker 1: those who opposed Reconstruction. They targeted black voters, elected officials,
[39:46] Speaker 1: and white allies. such as the teachers or local Republican leaders.
[39:52] Speaker 1: Nighttime raids by the Klan and similar groups like the
[39:55] Speaker 1: White League in Louisiana or the Red Shirts in Mississippi
[39:59] Speaker 1: involved whippings, shootings, and even just random lynchings. The aim
[40:06] Speaker 1: was to frighten the freedmen away from the polls and
[40:10] Speaker 1: to assassinate and intimidate any who represented them. A Bureau
[40:15] Speaker 1: report from Kentucky in 1867 detailed how a black man
[40:19] Speaker 1: was assaulted, threatened, and driven from his home for giving
[40:24] Speaker 1: information to the agents of the Bureau. Another was severely
[40:29] Speaker 1: whipped for not cooperating with a white mob. And these
[40:33] Speaker 1: incidents were not isolated either. During the 1868 presidential election campaign,
[40:39] Speaker 1: violence against black communities reached a crescendo. Dozens were killed
[40:44] Speaker 1: in political massacres in Louisiana's Opelousas and St. Lantry parishes.
[40:51] Speaker 1: And in Camilla, Georgia, a political rally was attacked by
[40:56] Speaker 1: armed whites. But despite all this, many freedmen bravely continued
[41:01] Speaker 1: to participate in politics, some even arming themselves in self-defense
[41:06] Speaker 1: or drilling in informal militias for their own protection. For
[41:12] Speaker 1: several years, the federal government responded with measures to suppress
[41:15] Speaker 1: the Klan and protect black voters. The Enforcement Acts of 1870-71,
[41:21] Speaker 1: also known as the Ku Klux Klan Acts, gave President
[41:25] Speaker 1: Ulysses S. Grant authority to use federal troops and suspend
[41:30] Speaker 1: habeas corpus in order to crush the Klan insurgency. In
[41:37] Speaker 1: parts of South Carolina, for example, Hundreds of Klansmen were arrested,
[41:42] Speaker 1: and Klan activity temporarily waned. These efforts allowed the Freedmen's
[41:47] Speaker 1: political participation to continue in the short term. In 1872,
[41:53] Speaker 1: Louisiana even saw PBS pinch back a man of mixed race,
[41:57] Speaker 1: served briefly as the acting governor, a scenario completely unimaginable
[42:03] Speaker 1: just years before. However, as the 1870s progressed, northern commitment
[42:10] Speaker 1: to military enforcement of black rights began to erode. Economic concerns,
[42:17] Speaker 1: like the Panic of 1873 and political fatigue in the North,
[42:22] Speaker 1: led to somewhat of a pullback. One-by-one Reconstruction governments in
[42:27] Speaker 1: the Deep South were overthrown by white democratic redeemers, often
[42:32] Speaker 1: through campaigns of fraud and violence. Mississippi's 1875 Elections were
[42:39] Speaker 1: notoriously violent, effectively marking the end of Reconstruction, there as
[42:46] Speaker 1: white Democrats reclaimed their power and openly celebrated driving out
[42:51] Speaker 1: the blacks from politics. By 1877, with the withdrawal of
[42:57] Speaker 1: the last federal troops as part of a national political compromise,
[43:01] Speaker 1: Reconstruction had effectively ended, and in its wake, most black
[43:08] Speaker 1: southerners were left politically disenfranchised, despite the formal protections of
[43:13] Speaker 1: the 14th and 15th Amendments. Even so, the achievements during
[43:19] Speaker 1: those brief years were real and lasting in some respects.
[43:24] Speaker 1: Black political activism did yield tangible changes, new state constitutions
[43:29] Speaker 1: in the South that expanded rights and social services, and
[43:33] Speaker 1: the principle, if not consistent, practice of equal citizenship for
[43:37] Speaker 1: African Americans. Moreover, the fact that freedmen had exercised the
[43:43] Speaker 1: vote and held office at a precedent that would inform
[43:46] Speaker 1: future generations. Well, we certainly see a poignant mix of
[43:52] Speaker 1: triumph and tragedy, I think. Triumph in their ability to organize, advocate,
[43:57] Speaker 1: and even govern, but that tragedy in the violent overthrow
[44:01] Speaker 1: of their efforts. And of course, The end of Reconstruction
[44:06] Speaker 1: only means the onset of the Jim Crow segregation that followed.
[44:10] Speaker 1: A topic for another time. But still, the freedmen of
[44:14] Speaker 1: the Deep South had shown what they were capable of
[44:17] Speaker 1: when given their franchise. An active engagement with democracy. That
[44:23] Speaker 1: belied every myth of their incapacity. This was a legacy
[44:29] Speaker 1: that would lie dormant, but not dead. It awaited the
[44:33] Speaker 1: civil rights movements of many decades later to finally be revived.
[44:42] Speaker 1: Then so, in the years immediately following the Civil War,
[44:45] Speaker 1: the freed slaves of the Deep South embarked on an
[44:48] Speaker 1: arduous journey. The story is one of resilience in the
[44:53] Speaker 1: face of a monumental challenge. We've seen how freedmen and
[44:57] Speaker 1: freedwomen labored to reconstitute their families, scouring the land for
[45:01] Speaker 1: those lost relatives. and finally getting that marriage officially sanctioned.
[45:08] Speaker 1: We have witnessed their zeal for education, cramming schools to
[45:12] Speaker 1: learn the literacy they had been forbidden, and laying the
[45:15] Speaker 1: groundwork for public schooling in the South. We've also seen
[45:19] Speaker 1: their fight for economic independence, as they negotiated new labour
[45:23] Speaker 1: systems and asserted their rights against exploitative sharecropping contracts. even
[45:29] Speaker 1: as many remained locked into poverty on the very plantations
[45:33] Speaker 1: they'd been enslaved. We followed their entry into politics, where
[45:38] Speaker 1: they claimed a voice in their own communities, voted by
[45:42] Speaker 1: the thousands held public office, and transformed southern governments, at
[45:47] Speaker 1: least for a few brief years. And we also saw
[45:52] Speaker 1: the fierce backlash, the black codes that sought to chain
[45:57] Speaker 1: their newfound freedom, the Knight Riders who tried to cow
[46:01] Speaker 1: them into submission, and the eventual collapse of Reconstruction under
[46:06] Speaker 1: the pressures of white supremacist violence and waning Northern support.
[46:13] Speaker 1: The era immediately after the Civil War was certainly a
[46:16] Speaker 1: formative period for the Deep South. The formerly enslaved people
[46:20] Speaker 1: didn't passively experience these changes, there were active agents of them.
[46:25] Speaker 1: They had to shape their own destiny, and no one
[46:27] Speaker 1: was going to do it for them. Their testimonies and
[46:31] Speaker 1: actions contradict any notion that freedom was simply given to them,
[46:35] Speaker 1: that's for sure. Instead, they had to take it, and
[46:40] Speaker 1: they had to try and breathe full life into it,
[46:43] Speaker 1: often at great personal risk. An only freedwoman in Alabama
[46:48] Speaker 1: perhaps summed it up the best way when she said later,
[46:52] Speaker 1: We had a hard road, but thank the Lord. that
[46:56] Speaker 1: we were on our way. For all the setbacks and sorrows,
[47:00] Speaker 1: and there are plenty of them, from the heartbreak to
[47:03] Speaker 1: the unfulfilled promises, to the sting of segregation imposed later,
[47:09] Speaker 1: the achievements of the Freedmen's generations were certainly significant. And so,
[47:14] Speaker 1: in closing, consider again the voice of Jordan Anderson, the
[47:19] Speaker 1: Freedman whose letter we encountered at the introduction of this video.
[47:23] Speaker 1: Anderson never did return to the old Tennessee plantation. Instead,
[47:30] Speaker 1: him and his wife raised their children in Ohio, and
[47:35] Speaker 1: he reportedly lived out his days in dignity, the master
[47:40] Speaker 1: of his own home. His story was just one among
[47:45] Speaker 1: the thousands of free slaves who sought better lives far
[47:49] Speaker 1: from those cotton fields. Most freed people, of course, remained
[47:53] Speaker 1: in the South, where they would endure another century of
[47:56] Speaker 1: struggle for equality. But the era of Reconstruction was certainly
[48:01] Speaker 1: not in vain. It was, in fact, the first real
[48:05] Speaker 1: civil rights movement in American history. A time when those
[48:10] Speaker 1: who had been in shackles stood up and claimed membership
[48:13] Speaker 1: in a nation's civic life. The freedmen and freedwomen of
[48:17] Speaker 1: the Deep South left an imprint on their region. Through
[48:21] Speaker 1: hardship and against ferocious opposition, They forged communities, asserted their humanity,
[48:28] Speaker 1: and kept alive that promise of democracy. So as we conclude,
[48:35] Speaker 1: the words of a black minister addressing a Reconstruction-era church
[48:39] Speaker 1: comes to mind. We are rising. Despite all that happened
[48:45] Speaker 1: in the years immediately after the Civil War, the good,
[48:47] Speaker 1: the bad, all the violent, the freed slaves of the
[48:50] Speaker 1: Deep South were indeed rising, and their ascent would reverberate.
[48:55] Speaker 1: long into the future where a new fight awaits well
[49:02] Speaker 1: of course that's something we'll talk about in a Jim
[49:05] Speaker 1: Crow video and all the rest I'll get there eventually
[49:09] Speaker 1: if you really want me to make it I suppose
[49:12] Speaker 1: you can leave me a comment and tell me that
[49:15] Speaker 1: you want me to make it I don't know. Do
[49:21] Speaker 1: whatever you like. You're probably asleep by now anyway. Anyway,
[49:24] Speaker 1: I'm going to thank my top dear patrons. That is Dark, Kimberly, Christine, Sally, Amber, Susan, Cameron, Legitmus, Gary, Charlene, Lynn, Therese, Katiana, Nicholas, Mulfineer, Alexander, Charles, Christine, Dr. Neuronerd, Aaron, Jaden, Jim, Jeffrey, Jessica, Madeline, Melissa, OrthodoxReviewer, Scott, StarkFactory, Cheryl, Wendy, Josie, Sarah, Ryan, Thor, Cameron, Stefan, Kevin, HMSHH, Crystal,
[49:56] Speaker 1: and Talvery. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.
[50:02] Speaker 1: And I will see you in the next video. Good
[50:07] Speaker 1: night for now, everyone. And as always, lots of love
[50:11] Speaker 1: to you all.

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