When they were emancipated, four courses were open to them.  They could flee from the plantation to the nearest town or city, or to the distant North, to seek a livelihood.  Thousands of them chose this way, overcrowding cities where disease mowed them down.  They could remain where they, were in their cabins and work for daily wages instead of food, clothing, and shelter.  This second course the major portion of them chose; but, as few masters had cash to dispense, the new relation was much like the old, in fact.  It was still one of barter.  The planter offered food, clothing, and shelter; the former slaves gave their labor in return.  That was the best that many of them could do.

A third course open to freedmen was that of renting from the former master, paying him usually with a share of the produce of the land.  This way a large number of them chose.  It offered them a chance to become land owners in time and it afforded an easier life, the renter being, to a certain extent at least, master of his own hours of labor.  The final and most difficult path was that to ownership of land.  Many a master helped his former slaves to acquire small holdings by offering easy terms.  The more enterprising and the more fortunate who started life as renters or wage-earners made their way upward to ownership in so many cases that by the end of the century, one-fourth of the colored laborers on the land owned the soil they tilled.

In the meantime, the South, though relatively poor, made relatively large expenditures for the education of the colored population.  By the opening of the twentieth century, facilities were provided for more than one-half of the colored children of school age.  While in many respects this progress was disappointing, its significance, to be appreciated, must be derived from a comparison with the total illiteracy which prevailed under slavery.

In spite of all that happened, however, the status of the negroes in the South continued to give a peculiar character to that section of the country.  They were almost entirely excluded from the exercise of the suffrage, especially in the Far South.  Special rooms were set aside for them at the railway stations and special cars on the railway lines.  In the field of industry calling for technical skill, it appears, from the census figures, that they lost ground between 1890 and 1900—­a condition which their friends ascribed to discriminations against them in law and in labor organizations and their critics ascribed to their lack of aptitude.  Whatever may be the truth, the fact remained that at the opening of the twentieth century neither the hopes of the emancipators nor the fears of their opponents were realized.  The marks of the “peculiar institution” were still largely impressed upon Southern society.