hey no longer belonged to him as property, but were
all free. 'You are not bound to remain with me any longer, and I have a
proposition to make to you. If any of you desire to leave, I propose to
furnish you with a conveyance to move you, and with provisions for the
balance of the year.' The universal answer was, 'Master, we want to stay
right here with you.' In many instances the slaves were so infatuated
with the idea of being, as they said, 'free as birds' that they left
their homes and consequently suffered; but our slaves were not so
foolish."*

* "Black and White under the Old Regime", p. 158,

The Negroes, however, had learned of their freedom before their old
masters returned from the war; they were aware that the issues of the
war involved in some way the question of their freedom or servitude,
and through the "grapevine telegraph," the news brought by the invading
soldiers, and the talk among the whites, they had long been kept fairly
well informed. What the idea of freedom meant to the Negroes it is
difficult to say. Some thought that there would be no more work and that
all would be cared for by the Government; others believed that education
and opportunity were about to make them the equal of their masters. The
majority of them were too bewildered to appreciate anything except the
fact that they were free from enforced labor.

Conditions were most disturbed in the so-called "Black Belt," consisting
of about two hundred counties in the most fertile parts of the South,
where the plantation system was best developed and where by far the
majority of the Negroes were segregated. The Negroes in the four hundred
more remote and less fertile "white" counties, which had been less
disturbed by armies, were not so upset by freedom as those of the
Black Belt, for the garrisons and the larger towns, both centers of
demoralization, were in or near the Black Belt. But there was a moving
to and fro on the part of those who had escaped from the South or had
been captured during the war or carried into the interior of the South
to prevent capture. To those who left slavery and home to find freedom
were added those who had found freedom and were now trying to get
back home or to get away from the Negro camps and colonies which
were breaking up. A stream of immigration which began to flow to
the southwest affected Negroes as far as the Atlantic coast. In the
confusion of moving, families were broken up, and children,