Speaking of this upheaval in Virginia, Eckenrode says that many of them roamed over the country without restraint.[42] “Released from their accustomed bonds,” says Hall, “and filled with a pleasing, if not vague, sense of uncontrolled freedom, they flocked to the cities with little hope of obtaining remunerative work.  Wagon loads of them were brought in from the country by the soldiers and dumped down to shift for themselves."[43] Referring to the proclamation of freedom, in Georgia, Thompson asserts that their most general and universal response was to pick up and leave the home place to go somewhere else, preferably to a town.  “The lure of the city was strong to the blacks, appealing to their social natures, to their inherent love for a crowd."[44] Davis maintains that thousands of the 70,000 Negroes in Florida crowded into the Federal military camps and into towns upon realizing that they were free.[45] According to Ficklen, the exodus of the slaves from the neighboring plantations of Louisiana into Baton Rouge, Carrollton and New Orleans was so great as to strain the resources of the Federal authorities to support them.  Ten thousand poured into New Orleans alone.[46] Fleming records that upon leaving their homes the blacks collected in gangs at the cross roads, in the villages and towns, especially near the military posts.  The towns were filled with crowds of blacks who left their homes with absolutely nothing, “thinking that the government would care for them, or more probably, not thinking at all."[47]

The portrayal of these writers of this phase of Reconstruction history contains a general truth, but in some cases the picture is overdrawn.  The student of history must bear in mind that practically all of our histories of that period are based altogether on the testimony of prejudiced whites and are written from their point of view.  Some of these writers have aimed to exaggerate the vagrancy of the blacks to justify the radical procedure of the whites in dealing with it.  The Negroes did wander about thoughtlessly, believing that this was the most effective way to enjoy their freedom.  But nothing else could be expected from a class who had never felt anything but the heel of oppression.  History shows that such vagrancy has always followed the immediate emancipation of a large number of slaves.  Many Negroes who flocked to the towns and army camps, moreover, had like their masters and poor whites seen their homes broken up or destroyed by the invading Union armies.  Whites who had never learned to work were also roaming and in some cases constituted marauding bands.[48]

There was, moreover, an actual drain of laborers to the lower and more productive lands in Mississippi and Louisiana.[49] This developed later into a more considerable movement toward the Southwest just after the Civil War, the exodus being from South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi to Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas.  Here was the pioneering spirit, a going to the land of more economic opportunities.  This slow movement continued from about 1865 to 1875, when the development of the numerous railway systems gave rise to land speculators who induced whites and blacks to go west and southwest.  It was a migration of individuals, but it was reported that as many as 35,000 Negroes were then persuaded to leave South Carolina and Georgia for Arkansas and Texas.[50]