From The New-York Times July 22, 1865:
The Freedmen of the South The Successful Progress of the Policy of the Government.
It is gratifying to know that the Freedman’s Bureau in Washington, under the management of Major-Gen. HOWARD, and the officers of the army detailed as superintendents in the various States, is fast overcoming all difficulties and achieving a most decided success. The colored people, under its direct charge, are adapting themselves with great cheerfulness to its regulations, and are cultivating the new crops with steadiness and general good behavior. They have come to an understanding that freedom does not mean idleness, and that their future well-being must depend mainly upon their own exertions; and they show little or no disposition to abuse the mild policy of the Government. The experiment is already far enough advanced to make it quite certain that all these freedmen will soon be brought to a self-supporting condition, and will be quite as well able to take care of themselves in all respects as the white population about them.
We refer particularly to the laborers on the government plantations, and those others who are under the special supervision of Gen. HOWARD’s bureau. To have brought them up so soon to this high line of good conduct is in itself a great point gained. It proves what wise and kind treatment can accomplish with the liberated slaves, and will show conclusively that it will be the fault of the planters if good results do not come from emancipation. It puts at rest forever the old bugbear that the freedom of the blacks would let loose all their bad passions, and make chaos of Southern society. It demonstrates that their confidence can be won, and that they can be brought to respond as favorably as any other men to reasonable inducements.
It would seem, indeed, that the freedmen can more easily accommodate themselves to their new condition than their old masters. The latter readily enough recognise theoretically that the blacks are no longer their chattels; but practically find it very difficult to treat the blacks as free moral agents. They are constantly inclined to impose their own will in the old arbitrary fashion, and to look to their own interests exclusively. Old habits are a second nature; and it is not at all singular that the Southern planters do not throw theirs off with more ease and grace. One of the duties of the Freedman’s Bureau is to check this propensity of the planters by securing to those they employ fair wages, and prescribing general regulations for their protection. Interference in this direction is not at all welcome to the planters; yet there is no serious attempt by them to make trouble. The fact is, that in the present transitional state of things, they look chiefly to the government for their security, and their power to carry on their plantations at all, and they will submit to almost anything required of them, however much it may go against their old grain. We may hope that gradually the new ways will be seen to be conducive to the interests of all, and that the relations of employers and employed, in the South, will regulate themselves with as little injustice to either side as they do here in the North.
The successful adjustment of this labor question is the primary concern in the reorganization of the South. Labor, the world over, lies at the foundation of all prosperity; nay, we may say, of any social existence at all. Communities may subsist without general suffrage, and without popular instruction, but are sure to go to ruin without work. If what had been told of the Southern blacks had been true, that they naturally were such haters of work that nothing but the lash could hold them to it, it would have established the claim that slavery was a Southern necessity. If it could have been proved that the sudden breaking up of slavery would entail a long breaking up of all Southern labor, justice to both, success in the South, and to the country at large, would have imperatively required the adoption of the gradual system. Four years ago, nine-tenths of the people of the country, North and South, believed sincerely that the inevitable result of any sudden emancipation would be universal black vagabondage; and that was, very justly, accounted a sufficient condemnation of any such scheme. It is of universal import that experience is proving the contrary. It supplies the only solid basis possible for the renovation of the South. To the whites it affords every inducement to return to the cultivation of their great staples with new energy, and to do their part toward establishing a new order of things. To the blacks it will furnish a title for every privilege of independent manhood. Men of any color, who have self-control enough to be steadily industrious, and honest enough to perform faithfully all their engagements, have the elements of a character that must, sooner or later, be put in the possession of all just rights and privileges. If the blacks of the South, as the prospect now is, should come up to the industrial standards held out by the Freedman’s Bureau, and contract the orderly and thrifty habits it seeks to establish, there need not be the slightest apprehension that they will not come to all the educational privileges and all the political power that may belong to them.
But again we invoke patience. Immense changes are yet to be wrought before the work is complete. All that has been gained thus far is but an earnest of what is to come from faithful endeavor in the future. What has hitherto been realized is valuable only as a promise. It took centuries to break down the feudal system of Europe, and sweep away the last vestiges of serfdom. Slavery had nearly, if not quite, as strong a hold upon Southern society. Do the best we can, it will take years to rid the land of its remnants. Its baneful influences will be felt by the poor freedmen through all this living generation. The greatest iniquity of slavery is not that it taxed the muscles of the slave without requital, but that it robbed him of every high quality of manhood. To raise him to his rightful level must be a gradual work. It will require time, and all good men should grant it without murmuring. Let there be no rashness, no precipitency, no sacrifices for mere abstractions, no indulgence of uncertain theories, but a calm, resolute, steady following up of a practical policy that, like the present, daily gives new tokens of final success.
The same issue included a report by A.S. Hitchcock, who apparently worked as an overseer of government plantations near Beaufort, South Carolina. Mr. Hitchcock saw both good and bad in how the former slaves had adapted to freedom and their new economic condition. Here’s an excerpt:
… So but little is decided by the success, or want of success agriculturally, of last year. The blacks worked; many of them worked hard. They carried their crops with tolerable efficiency. They were peaceable and law-abiding. They were mainly honest in their dealings. They bought themselves lands with money in hand, and built themselves settlements. They maintained good order among themselves, and sent their children to school and attended themselves to some extent. Now these are facts, and they form a basis on which to reckon and build favorably for the future, but progress will be slow and halting, with many untoward and unfortunate events and much to discourage one who is not full of faith and patience.
You may ask — well, will they work for wages? Some will and some will not. If the question is asked having in view the work done by Northern laborers and their habits, they would prove quite unsatisfactory. They need much culture and hard discipline to change their habits of labor. They must learn to consider hard, faithful labor a duty they owe to their employers as well as an interest for themselves. Heretofore their labor has been the result of force and fear; hence the habit of shirking and all possible avoiding of work. The habit of free steady labor, regular from morning till night, week by week, and month by month throughout the year they know nothing about as a general thing. …
