In 1860 there were 4,441,830 negroes in the United States, of whom only 488,070 were free.  About thirteen per cent of the total number were mulattoes.  Among the four million slaves were men and women of every gradation of experience with civilization, from those who had just disembarked from slave ships to those whose ancestry could be traced to the earliest days of the colonies.  It was not, therefore, a strictly homogeneous people upon whom were suddenly and dramatically laid the burdens and responsibilities of the freedman.  Among the emancipated blacks were not a few in whom there still throbbed vigorously the savage life they had but recently left behind and who could not yet speak intelligible English.  Though there were many who were skilled in household arts and in the useful customary handicrafts, large numbers were acquainted only with the simplest toil of the open fields.  There were a few free blacks who possessed property, in some instances to the value of many thousands of dollars, but the great bulk were wholly inexperienced in the responsibilities of ownership.  There were some who had mastered the rudiments of learning and here and there was to be found a gifted mind, but ninety per cent of the negroes were unacquainted with letters and were strangers to even the most rudimentary learning.  Their religion was a picturesque blend of Christian precepts and Voodoo customs.

The Freedmen’s Bureau, authorized by Congress early in 1865, had as its functions to aid the negro to develop self-control and self-reliance, to help the freedman with his new wage contracts, to befriend him when he appeared in court, and to provide for him schools and hospitals.  It was a simple, slender reed for the race to lean upon until it learned to walk.  But it interfered with the orthodox opinion of that day regarding individual independence and was limited to the period of war and one year thereafter.  It was eyed with suspicion and was regarded with criticism by both the keepers of the laissez faire faith and the former slave owners.  It established a number of schools and made a modest beginning in peasant proprietorship and free labor.[12]

When this temporary guide was withdrawn, private organizations to some extent took its place.  The American Missionary Association continued the educational work, and volunteers shouldered other benevolences.  But no power and no organization could take the place of the national authority.  If the Freedmen’s Bureau could have been stripped of those evil-intentioned persons who used it for private gain, been so organized as to enlist the support of the Southern white population, and been continued until a new generation of blacks were prepared for civil life, the colossal blunders and criminal misfits of that bitter period of transition might have been avoided.  But political opportunism spurned comprehensive plans, and the negro suddenly found himself forced into social, political, and economic competition with the white man.