ther, the laws enacted must force the
Negroes to settle down, to work, and to hold to contracts. Memminger
showed that, without legislation to enforce contracts and to secure
eviction of those who refused to work, the white planter in the South
was wholly at the mercy of the Negro. The plantations were scattered,
the laborers' houses were already occupied, and there was no labor
market to which a planter could go if the laborers deserted his fields.

What would the Negro become if these leaders of reconstruction were
to have their way? Something better than a serf, something less than a
citizen--a second degree citizen, perhaps, with legal rights about equal
to those of white women and children. Governor Marvin hoped to make of
the race a good agricultural peasantry; his successor was anxious that
the blacks should be preferred to European immigrants; others agreed
with Memminger that after training and education he might be advanced to
full citizenship.

These opinions are representative of those held by the men who,
Memminger excepted, were placed in charge of affairs by President
Johnson and who were not especially in sympathy with the Negroes or
with the planters but rather with the average white. All believed that
emancipation was a mistake, but all agreed that "it is not the Negro's
fault" and gave no evidence of a disposition to perpetuate slavery under
another name.

The legislation finally framed showed in its discriminatory features the
combined influence of the old laws for free Negroes, the vagrancy laws
of North and South for whites, the customs of slavery times, the British
West Indies legislation for ex-slaves, and the regulations of the United
States War and Treasury Departments and of the Freedmen's Bureau--all
modified and elaborated by the Southern whites. In only two states,
Mississippi and South Carolina, did the legislation bulk large in
quantity; in other states discriminating laws were few; in still other
states none were passed except those defining race and prohibiting
intermarriage.

In all of the state laws there were certain common characteristics,
among which were the following: the descendant of a Negro was to be
classed as a Negro through the third generation,* even though one parent
in each generation was white; intermarriage of the races was prohibited;
existing slave marriages were declared valid and for the future marriage
was generally made easier for the blacks than for the whit