FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   210   211   212   213   214   215   216   217   218   219   220   221   222   223   224   225   226   227   228   229   230   231   232   233   234  
235   236   237   238   239   240   241   242   243   244   245   246   247   248   249   250   251   252   253   254   255   256   257   258   259   >>   >|  
appeared in the offices of the Freedmen's Bureau. This had been established by Congress, in March, 1865, with the laudable design of helping to adjust the freedmen to their new condition; to make temporary provision for the extreme physical wants of some; to aid them in arrangements for labor and education; and, as was at first contemplated, to lease to them abandoned or confiscated lands, in plots of forty acres, for three years. This land provision was soon abandoned, there being no confiscation to provide the necessary land; but it started the expectation of "forty acres and a mule," which misled many a freedman. As chief of the Bureau was appointed General O. O. Howard, a distinguished Union commander, of the highest personal character, and entirely devoted to his new work; and under him was a commissioner with a working force in each of the States. The Bureau accomplished considerable good; but its administration on the whole was not of the highest class; among its subordinates were some unfit men; and a good deal of offense and irritation attended its operations. At most, it touched only the circumference of the problem. Three and a half millions of newly enfranchised, ignorant men, women and children! What should provide for the helpless among them, especially for the children, whom the master's care had supported? How should order be maintained in the lower mass, half-brutalized, whom slavery had at least restrained from vagabondage, rapine, and crime? And how should the whole body be induced to furnish the dynamic, driving power of industry essential to the community's needs? These questions the South essayed to answer in part by a system of laws, of which we may take as a fair specimen the legislation of Mississippi--the only State which had enacted this class of laws before Congress met,--as they are summarized in the thorough and impartial book of Professor J. W. Burgess, _Reconstruction and the Constitution_. The law of apprenticeship ran thus: Negro children under eighteen, orphans or receiving no support from their parents, to be apprenticed, by clerk of probate court, to some suitable person,--by preference the former master or mistress; the court to fix the terms, having the interest of the minor particularly in view; males to be apprenticed till end of twenty-first year, females to end of eighteenth. No other punishment to be permitted than the common law permits to a parent or guardian. If the appre
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   210   211   212   213   214   215   216   217   218   219   220   221   222   223   224   225   226   227   228   229   230   231   232   233   234  
235   236   237   238   239   240   241   242   243   244   245   246   247   248   249   250   251   252   253   254   255   256   257   258   259   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

children

 

Bureau

 

abandoned

 
master
 
apprenticed
 

provide

 
highest
 

Congress

 

provision

 

Mississippi


specimen
 

legislation

 

enacted

 

essential

 

induced

 
furnish
 

dynamic

 

restrained

 

vagabondage

 
rapine

driving

 
essayed
 

answer

 

questions

 

industry

 

community

 

system

 
orphans
 

twenty

 

mistress


interest

 

females

 

eighteenth

 

parent

 

permits

 

guardian

 

common

 

punishment

 

permitted

 

preference


Burgess

 

Reconstruction

 

Constitution

 

Professor

 

summarized

 

impartial

 
apprenticeship
 

parents

 

probate

 

suitable