418 Chapter 15 Reconstruction and the South
The Ravaged Land
The South’s grave economic problems complicated
the rebuilding of its political system. The section had
never been as prosperous as the North, and wartime
destruction left it desperately poor by any standard.
In the long run the abolition of slavery released
immeasurable quantities of human energy previously
stifled, but the immediate effect was to create confu-
sion. Freedom to move without a pass, to “see the
world,” was one of the former slaves’ most cherished
benefits of emancipation. Understandably, many at
first equated legal freedom with freedom from hav-
ing to earn a living, a tendency reinforced for a
time by the willingness of the Freedmen’s Bureau
to provide rations and other forms of relief in war-
devastated areas. Most, however, soon accepted the
fact that they must earn a living; a small plot of land
of their own (“40 acres and a mule”) would com-
plete their independence.
This objective was forcefully supported by the
relentless Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, whose
hatred of the planter class was pathological. “The
property of the chief rebels should be seized,” he
stated. If the lands of the richest “70,000 proud,
bloated and defiant rebels” were confiscated, the
federal government would obtain 394 million acres.
Every adult male ex-slave could easily be supplied
with 40 acres. The beauty of his scheme, Stevens
insisted, was that “nine-tenths of the [southern]
people would remain untouched.” Dispossessing
the great planters would make the South “a safe
republic,” its lands cultivated by “the free labor of
intelligent citizens.” If the plan drove the planters
into exile, “all the better.”
Although Stevens’s figures were faulty, many
Radicals agreed with him. “We must see that the
freedmen are established on the soil,” Senator
Sumner declared. “The great plantations, which have
been so many nurseries of the rebellion, must be bro-
ken up, and the freedmen must have the pieces.”
Stevens, Sumner, and others who wanted to give land
to the freedmen weakened their case by associating it
with the idea of punishing the former rebels; the aver-
age American had too much respect for property
rights to support a policy of confiscation.
Aside from its vindictiveness, the extremists’ view
was simplistic. Land without tools, seed, and other
necessities would have done the freedmen little good.
Congress did throw open 46 million acres of poor-
quality federal land in the South to blacks under the
Southern Homestead Act, but few settled on it. (Of
the 3,000 former slaves who filed claims under its
provisions in Florida, Whoopi Goldberg’s great-
great-grandparents were among the 300 who suc-
ceeded in fulfilling its terms.) Establishing former
slaves on small farms with adequate financial aid
would have been of incalculable benefit to them. This
would have been practicable, but extremely expen-
sive. It was not done.
The former slaves therefore had either to agree
to work for their former owners or strike out on
their own. White planters, influenced by the precip-
itous decline of sugar production in Jamaica and
other Caribbean islands that had followed the aboli-
tion of slavery there, expected freed blacks to be
incapable of self-directed effort. If allowed to
become independent farmers, they would either
starve to death or descend into barbarism. Of
course the blacks did neither. True, the output of
cotton and other southern staples declined precipi-
tously after slavery was abolished. Observers soon
came to the conclusion that a free black produced
much less than a slave had produced. “You can’t get
only about two-thirds as much out of ’em now as
you could when they were slaves,” an Arkansas
planter complained.
However, the decline in productivity was not
caused by the inability of free blacks to work indepen-
dently. They simply chose no longer to work like
slaves. They let their children play instead of forcing
them into the fields. Mothers devoted more time to
childcare and housework, less to farm labor. Elderly
blacks worked less.
Noting these changes, white critics spoke
scornfully of black laziness and shiftlessness. “You
cannot make the negro work without physical com-
pulsion,” was the common view. Even General
Oliver O. Howard, head of the Freedmen’s Bureau,
used the phrase “wholesome compulsion” in
describing the policy of forcing blacks to sign
exploitive labor contracts. A leading southern mag-
azine complained in 1866 that black women now
expected their husbands “to support them in idle-
ness.” It would never have made such a comment
about white housewives. Moreover, studies show
that emancipated blacks earned almost 30 percent
more than the value of the subsistence provided by
their former masters.
The family life of ex-slaves was changed in other
ways. Male authority increased when husbands
became true heads of families. (Under slavery the