tried, and few adopted.

The new regime differed but little from the old until the fall of
1865, when the Freedmen's Bureau, aided by the negro soldiers and
white emissaries, had filled the minds of the credulous ex-slaves with
false impressions of the new and glorious condition that lay before
them. Then, with the extension of the Bureau and spread of the army
posts, many of the negroes became idle, neglected the crops planted in
the spring, and moved from their old homes to the towns or wandered
aimlessly from place to place.

Upon leaving their homes the blacks collected in gangs at the
cross-roads, in the villages and towns, and especially near the
military posts. To the negro these ordinary men in blue were beings
from another sphere who had brought him freedom, a something he could
not exactly comprehend, but which, he was assured, was a delightful
state.

Upon the negro women often fell the burden of supporting the children,
to which hardship were traceable the then common crimes of foeticide
and child murder. The small number of children during the decade of
Reconstruction was generally remarked. Negro women began to flock to
the towns; how they lived no one can tell; immorality was general
among them. The conditions of Reconstruction were unfavorable to
honesty and morality among the negroes, both male and female.

Their marriage relations were hardly satisfactory, judged by white
standards. The legislatures in 1865-1866 had declared slave marriages
binding. The reconstructionists denounced this as a great cruelty and
repealed the laws. Marriages were then made to date from the passage
of the Reconstruction Acts. As many negro men had had several wives
before that date they were relieved from the various penalties of
desertion, bigamy, adultery, etc. Some seized the opportunity to
desert their wives and children and acquire new help-meets. While much
suffering resulted from the desertion, as a rule, the negro mother
alone supported the children better than did the father who stayed.

Negro women accepted freedom with even greater seriousness than did
the men, and were not always, nor easily, induced to again take up the
familiar drudgery of field labor and domestic service. To approximate
the ease of their former mistresses, to wear fine clothes and go often
to church were their chief ambitions. Negro women had never been as
well-mannered, nor, on the whole, as good natured and cheerful as the
negro men.