s, the last one in 1870. Even this grudging concession of the
formalities of statehood did not mean a full restoration of honors and
privileges. The last soldier was not withdrawn from the last Southern
capital until 1877, and federal control over elections long remained as
a sign of congressional supremacy.

=The Status of the Freedmen.=--Even more intricate than the issues
involved in restoring the seceded states to the union was the question
of what to do with the newly emancipated slaves. That problem, often put
to abolitionists before the war, had become at last a real concern. The
thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery had not touched it at all. It
declared bondmen free, but did nothing to provide them with work or
homes and did not mention the subject of political rights. All these
matters were left to the states, and the legislatures of some of them,
by their famous "black codes," restored a form of servitude under the
guise of vagrancy and apprentice laws. Such methods were in fact partly
responsible for the reaction that led Congress to abandon Lincoln's
policies and undertake its own program of reconstruction.

Still no extensive effort was made to solve by law the economic problems
of the bondmen. Radical abolitionists had advocated that the slaves when
emancipated should be given outright the fields of their former
masters; but Congress steadily rejected the very idea of confiscation.
The necessity of immediate assistance it recognized by creating in 1865
the Freedmen's Bureau to take care of refugees. It authorized the issue
of food and clothing to the destitute and the renting of abandoned and
certain other lands under federal control to former slaves at reasonable
rates. But the larger problem of the relation of the freedmen to the
land, it left to the slow working of time.

Against sharp protests from conservative men, particularly among the
Democrats, Congress did insist, however, on conferring upon the freedmen
certain rights by national law. These rights fell into broad divisions,
civil and political. By an act passed in 1866, Congress gave to former
slaves the rights of white citizens in the matter of making contracts,
giving testimony in courts, and purchasing, selling, and leasing
property. As it was doubtful whether Congress had the power to enact
this law, there was passed and submitted to the states the fourteenth
amendment which gave citizenship to the freedmen, assured them of the
privileg