emancipation proclamation
...ld do after emancipation. However, now they were being forced into staying because few knew anything other than farming. In December of 1865, Congress voted to stamp out these codes. Testimony to the southern white sentiment showed what would have happened if states were allowed to employ their own laws in regards to slavery. Blacks soon develop a sense of freedom and want to create lives for themselves. They do not want to remain in a place and continue to be employed by those who previously treated them as animals. Mr. Lewis, a former slave, tells a planters wife, “Mrs. Henry, I want to move away and feel entirely free and see what I can do by myself.” Even kind masters, like the Henry’s, lost many slaves due to the want and need of freedom. Charles Davenport stated, “Freedom meant us could leave where us’d been born and bred, but it meant, too, dat us had to scratch for our ownselves.” However, outsiders made independence nearly impossible. The sharecropping system, in which most had worked before, was still the only employment available and certainly the only work blacks knew as familiar. Rural merchants tried to give blacks a chance for employment, but often forced them into a position where they would sharecrop. The Ku Klux Klan also had a devastating effect on both the black mind and body. The Klan greatly influenced the black freedom. Klan members would harass, beat, and even kill the blacks that did not take the clans advice, usually telling them to vote democratic. One man was taken out by the Klan, beaten, and was told to promise he would “vote the democratic ticket.” He responded by saying “I don’t know how I will vote; it looks hard when a body thinks this way and that way to take a beating.” Enforcement Acts attempted to reduce the Ku Klux Klan’s activities. These Enforcement Acts first goal was to protect black voters themselves. The elections would also be federally supervised. These Acts went another step forward by limiting the rights of those whom disadvantaged or impeded blacks voting. The president was also given the power and authority to position federal troops in an area declared to be under rebellion of these laws. Unfortunately, Grant withdrew many federal troops positioned throughout the south and disabled an effective way of enforcing the Acts. Black family and social life began to steadily improve. Family dynamics were turning toward more traditional ways, with the man of the household completing most of the manual labor. Many blacks soon wanted to be educated and literate. Many public schools, supervised by the Freedmen’s Bureau, were built so ex-slaves and their children could be educated. Black churches also offered a place where blacks were offered a participatory experience. Funds were raised for schooling and Republican policies were supported in these churches. By 1865, black ministers assumed political roles and the ...