The Wards Of The Nation
The Negroes at the close of the war were not slaves or serfs, nor were they citizens. What was to be done with them and for them? The Southern answer to this question may be found in the so- called "Black Laws," which were enacted by the state governments set up by President Johnson. The views of the dominant North may be discerned in part in the organization and administration of the Freedmen's Bureau. The two sections saw the same problem from different angles, and their proposed solutions were of necessity opposed in principle and in practice.

The South desired to fit the emancipated Negro race into the new social order by frankly recognizing his inferiority to the whites. In some things racial separation was unavoidable. New legislation consequently must be enacted, because the slave codes were obsolete; because the old laws made for the small free Negro class did not meet present conditions; and because the emancipated blacks could not be brought conveniently and at once under laws originally devised for a white population. The new laws must meet many needs; family life, morals, and conduct must be regulated; the former slave must be given a status in court in order that he might be protected in person and property; the old, the infirm, and the orphans must be cared for; the white race must be protected from lawless blacks and the blacks from unscrupulous and violent whites; the Negro must have an opportunity for education; and the roving blacks must be forced to get homes, settle down, and go to work.