Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/313

Rh support. As he stated, large numbers had quit work in the fields, and considered their newly-acquired freedom as relieving them from labor. Somehow they felt that the government would feed, clothe and care for them. This was being done by the bureau, and large numbers had assembled in cities and towns to be supported.

If the new State governments were to take charge, as State governments did in other States, and as was the case before secession, wisdom admonished the legislators to provide for this condition of things and correct it. The Southern people had lived with the negroes; they understood them far better than did the Northern people and the politicians of the North. Some legislatures, to meet this condition of affairs, passed certain laws known as vagrant laws, similar to many found on the statute books of the Northern States, possibly a little different because the surroundings were different. The North, however, in the desire to protect the negro from imposition, not fully understanding matters, took great offense at this, and felt that it was an effort to re-enslave the negro, and defeat the purpose of his freedom. A careful analysis of these vagrant laws, so called, and similar laws on the statute books of the North framed to meet conditions far less aggravated and void of the prejudices and bad blood of the time, will show there was no ground for this excuse seized upon to defeat presidential reconstruction. These laws were of little import anyway, for the bureaus of refugees, freedmen and abandoned lands, backed by military force, were overriding everything in a supposed protection of the rights of the negroes, encouraging them in idleness and inculcating vicious ideas and hostility toward the Southern whites.

The committee of fifteen was carefully selected to carry out its purpose, viz., to perpetuate the power and continued existence of the Republican party. It was