nd his master's clothes if he could get them.

The former good manners of the Negro were now replaced by impudence and
distrust. There were advisers among the Negro troops and other agitators
who assured them that politeness to whites was a mark of servitude.
Pushing and crowding in public places, on street cars and on the
sidewalks, and impudent speeches everywhere marked generally the limit
of rudeness. And the Negroes were, in this respect, perhaps no worse
than those European immigrants who act upon the principle that bad
manners are a proof of independence.

The year following emancipation was one of religious excitement for
large numbers of the blacks. Before 1865, the Negro church members were
attached to white congregations or were organized into missions, with
nearly always a white minister in charge and a black assistant. With the
coming of freedom the races very soon separated in religious matters.
For this there were two principal reasons: the Negro preachers could
exercise more influence in independent churches; and new church
organizations from the North were seeking Negro membership. Sometimes
Negro members were urged to insist on the right "to sit together" with
the whites. In a Richmond church a Negro from the street pushed his way
to the communion altar and knelt. There was a noticeable pause; then
General Robert E. Lee went forward and knelt beside the Negro; and the
congregation followed his example. But this was a solitary instance.
When the race issue was raised by either color, the church membership
usually divided. There was much churchgoing by the Negroes, day and
night, and church festivities and baptisms were common. The blacks
preferred immersion and, wanted a new baptism each time they changed
to a new church. Baptizings in ponds, creeks, or rivers were great
occasions and were largely attended. "Shouting" the candidates went into
the water and "shouting" they came out. One old woman came up screaming,
"Freed from slavery! freed from sin! Bless God and General Grant!"

In the effort to realize their new-found freedom, the Negroes were
heavily handicapped by their extreme poverty and their ignorance. The
total value of free Negro property ran up into the millions in 1860,
but the majority of the Negroes had nothing. There were a few educated
Negroes in the South, and more in the North and in Canada, but the mass
of the race was too densely ignorant to furnish its own leadership. The
case, h