old employers;
but a considerable part began an aimless roaming to enjoy their new
liberty, or huddle around the stations where the agents of the
Freedmen's Bureau doled out some relief. As to their education, popular
opinion was no less unfavorable than as to their labor. The common
expressions were "learning will spoil the negro for work," "negro
education would be the ruin of the South," and even "the elevation of
the blacks would be the degradation of the whites." In practical
application of these views, negro schools were frequently broken up and
the school-houses burned; and in many places they were only safe under
the immediate protection of the Federal troops. After many further
particulars, especially as to the oppressive laws passed by the new
governments, Mr. Schurz sums up: "To recapitulate; the white people of
the South were harassed by pressing necessities, and most of them in a
troubled and greatly excited state of mind. The emancipation of the
slaves had destroyed the traditional labor system upon which they had
depended. Free negro labor was still inconceivable to them. There were
exceptions, but, as a rule, their ardent, and in a certain sense not
unnatural, desire was to resist its introduction, and to save or restore
as much of the slave labor system as possible."

It was the character of the laws and ordinances passed under these
circumstances which was to the better sentiment of the North the most
concrete and convincing argument against restoring the Southern States
by the short and easy road proposed by President Johnson. It is to those
laws, and the condition underlying them, that we must ascribe the
refusal of Congress--backed by Northern conviction--to confirm the early
restoration which at first seemed so promising. So those laws deserve
careful consideration, as well as the situation which led to them.

The Southern people, blacks and whites, were in a position of almost
unexampled difficulty. To the ravages of war and invasion, of
impoverishment and bereavement--and, as it fell out, to two successive
seasons of disastrous weather for crops,--was added at the outset a
complete disarrangement of the principal supply of labor. The mental
overturning was as great as the material. To the negroes "freedom"
brought a vague promise of life without toil or trouble. The hard facts
soon undeceived them. But for the indulgent Providence they at first
hoped for, some occasional and partial substitute