Unheard Voices: Journey Through Black Reconstruction

“The South had risked war to protect this system of labor [slavery] and to expand it into a triumphant empire; and even if all the Southerners did not agree with this broader program, even these had risked war in order to ward off the disaster of a free labor class, either white or black.  Yet, they failed.”    W.E.B. DuBois,  Black Reconstruction in America

With their failure of the South in the Civil War came victory for millions of enslaved blacks.  The foundation of the Southern labor system had been shattered by the North.  They were now without authority, the North had begun to reconstruct the South socially, politically, and economically.  Reconstruction, a policy designed to rebuild the South and assimilate the freedmen into society.  However, they, the freedmen, were the victims of war then subsequently of Reconstruction.  The war left many jobless, homeless, and penniless; yet Reconstruction sought to help them gain autonomy through free labor.  It failed, blacks were subjected to racism without protection under the law and many remained in free labor employment contracts that resembled compulsory labor.  Blacks would not achieve full equality under federal law until a century after the Civil War.