Labor Ideologies and the Freedmen's Bureau

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Labor Ideologies and the Freedmen’s Bureau
Written by,
Aaron Harmaty
Advised by,
Dr. William Carter
Honor’s Thesis

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Table of Contents
Abstract
3
Introduction: A Union Scarred and Mangled
4
Chapter 1: Antebellum Ideologies
17
Chapter 2: To Build a Nation
43
Afterword: A Union Healed
76
Works Cited
79

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Abstract:
This thesis uses the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands as a lens to
examine how antebellum ideologies evolved and interacted with each other during
Reconstruction. This thesis will show that the Civil War occurred because of two distinct
ideologies, free labor in the North and proslavery (which would become proslavery in the
abstract after the Civil War) in the South, which could not reconcile their differing ways
of seeing the world. Ideology played a key role in Reconstruction, and the Freedmen’s
Bureau is the best place to look at how the ideologies interacted during that time. The
Reconstruction years that followed were a time of enormous possibilities, but the
constraints of free labor ideology prevented Northerners from appreciating the dynamic
situation in the South, and proslavery in the abstract motivated white Southerners to
successfully resist attempts at reform. Free laborites’ failure to transform the South led
Northerners to re-examine their dearest held assumptions, and slavery in the abstract
believers’ success in staving off free labor taught Southerners that their idea of
civilization, though changed by war, was just.

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Introduction: A Union Scarred and Mangled
Hundreds of thousands Americans died during the Civil War, but the North
triumphed on the battlefields and ensured that the Union would be maintained. While
President Abraham Lincoln had died and was replaced by the South-sympathetic Andrew
Johnson, the Republicans in Congress had enough power to deny Representatives from
the former Confederacy their seats in Congress. The North appeared to have won a total
victory over the South. The North could have done whatever it wanted, and the
Republicans in Congress wanted to reform the South so that a second Civil War could
never happen. During the years of 1865-1868, Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau
Bills, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Klan Acts, and other pieces of legislation that
expanded the scope of the federal government. After Congress passed the responsibility
for Reconstruction to the newly reconstructed state governments, an even more radical
change occurred: biracial rule. Freedmen made enormous portions of the electorate in the
newly reconstructed states, and these state governments passed inventive pieces of
legislation that helped modernize the South.1
These conditions caused Reconstruction to be the most contentious period in the
Republic’s history aside from the Civil War. President Johnson’s attempts to obstruct
Congress provided legitimacy for those who opposed the egalitarian leanings of
Reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan terrorized Freedmen and Republicans in the South
while Northern Democrats refused to lend the Reconstructed-Southern governments any
support to deal with the changing economic realities of the 1870s. When Reconstruction
officially ended in 1877, Americans at large blamed racial-egalitarianism for all of the
problems that occurred during the fourteen year-long Reconstruction era.
1
W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstructionin America, (NewYork,NewYork: The Free Press,1998), 406-407.

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Understanding how the Republic got to that point requires a review of the
circumstances that led to one of the great, tragic ironies of American history; the South
won the peace that the North had fought to ensure. Southerners had been humbled and the
North was in a position to create a new world in the South.2 Southerners from most of the
former Confederacy were denied representation in Congress, which left Northerners in
charge of the process. Most importantly, Northerners were committed to Reconstruction.
They had several goals they wanted to accomplish, of the most important of which was
the creation of a unified nation. In essence, they wanted to ensure that the Union they
fought for would be stronger and more stable than the antebellum Union.
In order to achieve that, they had to transform the South into a new North. In
order to bring about that transformation, the North had to impress its free labor ideology
onto the South. Free labor was an ideology centered on the dignity of labor, and its
central tenet was that anyone could improve their lot if they worked hard enough because
God rewards hard work through the market. Even though many white free laborites were
racist, they believed that blacks could learn the lessons of free labor and thus improve
themselves.3
The first objective of Congressional Reconstruction following the Civil War was
to prevent a situation in which the aristocracy that led the South out of the Union would
be in a position to dominate the South after the war. The second aim was to encourage
black ownership of Southern land, in order for black people to remain free and learn the
free labor worldview. This was important because if the Freedmen remained free and
owned property, then the aristocracy would be unable to re-enslave them.
2
Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, (NewYork,NewYork: Perennial Classics, 2002),17.
3
Eric Foner, FreeSoil,Free Labor, FreeMen: TheIdeologyof the RepublicanParty before theCivil War, (NewYork, NY: Oxford
UniversityPress, 1995), 45-46.

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Key to those goals was a plan for of land redistribution, which would seize land
from the rebellious plantation owners, and relocate at least some portion of it to the
Freedmen.4 This plan, devised by Thaddeus Stevens, a member of the House of
Representatives from Pennsylvania, was outlined in the first year of the Civil War,
though at the time it did not have widespread support. The idea behind his plan
eventually morphed into a widespread belief among Northerners about the benefits of
land distribution, which would allow the Freedmen to learn what it meant to be free and
gain some economic stability.5
The first Freedmen’s Bureau, established in March of 1865, was created for that
very purpose. The historian Eric Foner articulated the vast responsibilities of the Bureau
in his seminal work, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, when
he wrote, the, “Bureau was to distribute clothing, food, and fuel to destitute Freedmen
and oversee ‘all subjects’ relating to their position in the South.”6 The Bureau would also,
As suggested by its full title – Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands – it
was authorized to divide abandoned land into forty-acre plots, for rental to freedmen and
loyal refugees and eventual sale with “such title as the United States can convey”
(language that reflected the legal ambiguity of the government’s hold on Southern land).7
In short, not only was the Bureau responsible for providing some basic necessities to the
Freedmen, but the Bureau was also responsible for anything related to the position of the
Freedmen in Southern society, which included education, labor, and land ownership.
While it is important to note that the Bureau, in Foner’s words, “despite its unprecedented
responsibilities and powers” was “clearly envisioned as a temporary expedient” –as
evidenced by its limited funding – it cannot be overstated how revolutionary an
4
Claude Oubre, Forty Acres and a Mule,(BatonRouge, LA: Louisiana State UniversityPress, 2012), 1-2.
5
Oubre, Forty Acres and a Mule,22.
6
Foner, Reconstruction:America’s UnfinishedRevolution, 1863-1877,69.
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organization the Bureau was in American history.8 This was an organization explicitly
designed to help the Freedmen integrate into American society while at the same time
improve their lot economically.
Despite the progressive undertones of the Bureau, its existence should not be seen
as inspired by a sense of racial egalitarianism in the North, even though many of the
people in favor of the Bureau were racial egalitarians. The racial prejudices of the time
convinced Northern whites that the Freedmen, without the benefit of ever having lived in
a free society, would need to learn that in a free society, people would not necessarily
help them.9 To give land to Freedmen would not only teach Freedmen to learn the value
of hard work, but it would also ensure that the Southern aristocrats who started the Civil
War would never be in a position to start another war. Most Northerners who supported
this plan did so because they believed that this would prevent aristocrats from retaking
power, and that the exercise would teach Freedmen what it meant to be free.
Unfortunately for Northerners and the freedmen, the South still had a powerful
champion, in the form of President Johnson, who fought for its interests. Put on the
Unionist ticket in 1864 because the Republicans wanted a pro-union Southerner on the
ticket, no one could have imagined that he would eventually be deemed too soft on the
South. In fact, he became the Southern Unionist in America, in part because he was an
acceptable military governor of Tennessee, but especially because he voiced a very harsh
stance against the rebels.10
Johnson, like Southern society at large, held a proslavery worldview that should
have become invalidated after the Civil War. However, proslavery was actually
8
9
Ulysses Grant, “Gen Grant’s Report tothe Presidency,” publishedin The Spirit of Democracy (Columbus, OH), December27,1865.
10

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descended from an older ideology that this paper refers to as slavery in the abstract. The
objective of people who held this ideology was not equality of opportunity. Slavery in the
abstract was hierarchal worldview, and it asserted that freedom came from restricting
other people’s liberties. This people who held this ideology needed a permanent
underclass in it so that poor whites would not try to expunge it, and slaves served as that
underclass during the antebellum period. At the beginning of Reconstruction, when
slavery was abolished, proslavery could not exist as it once did. People who believed in
proslavery had to return to the roots of proslavery ideology, slavery in the abstract, with
some revisions in order for their ideology to survive. If they were unable to do that, then
their perspective would die.
Johnson, after he ascended to the Presidency, decided to ensure that his
Reconstruction plan would be implemented, and the much more Radical Congressional
plan would be averted. On May 9th, 1865, Johnson issued his Amnesty Proclamation, in
which he granted, “to all persons who have, directly or indirectly, participated in the
existing rebellion,” except for certain leaders of the Confederacy, “amnesty and pardon,
with restoration of all rights of property, except as to slaves,” so long as they took a
loyalty oath.11 He was a firm believer in quickly bringing the Union together, and he
understood that trying to change the South would delay that re-union greatly. His
Amnesty Proclamation had a profound impact on Reconstruction.
When Johnson issued this proclamation, he prevented Congressional Republicans
from executing Reconstruction in the way they initially wanted to. By effectively ending
11
AndrewJohnson,Amnesty Proclamation,May 29, 1865, AndrewJohnsonPapers, Library ofCongress, 7A.

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the land reform debate, Johnson crippled the Reconstruction process.12 The lack of
available land for Freedmen pushed them into the sharecropping contracts that allowed
for no social or economic mobility. Further, many plantation owners were able to retain
their land and have blacks continue to work for them. Except for the continued presence
Northern soldiers in the former-Confederacy, the South was able to adapt its ideology
comfortably to a world without slavery. Southerners were able to do this because they
understood liberty in a hierarchical context, so as long as there was oppression
somewhere in the society (in their case, the continued oppression of black people) they
could consider themselves free. While there were certainly opportunities for Northerners
to guide Reconstruction closer to what they initially intended, this moment made the goal
of widespread black land ownership in the South almost impossible.
Many Northerners went South for various reasons, but even those Northerners
who moved South in order to profit from the economic chaos of the region still believed
that they would transform the South into a new North.13 Many of them were interested in
money, but others were activists trying to change the world.14 They believed that the only
way to ensure that there would be peace and stability for the Union in the future, the
South would have to adopt free labor for the sake of American civilization. If the South
adopted free labor, then that would mean that the South would never have a reason to
threaten the Union again, and it that adoption would also prove the superiority of
Northern, free labor civilization over Southern, slave-holding decay.15
Secondary Literature
12
While there were someinstances of landsales andother forms of landdistributionafterthe summer of1865, such efforts did not
compare in scope orin scale tothe original mission ofthe Freedmen’s Bureau. Oubre, FortyAcres anda Mule,37.
13
Lawrence Powell, New Masters: Northern Planters Duringthe Civil War and Reconstruction, (NewYork, NewYork: Fordham
UniversityPress, 1998), 1.
14
Powell, New Masters: Northern Planters Duringthe Civil War and Reconstruction, xiii.
15
Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men:The Ideology of the RepublicanParty before the Civil War, 50.

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With the end of Reconstruction in 1877, and the blame for its failures laid at the
feet of the Freedmen in the South and the Northerners who had empowered them, the
American populace, and academia specifically, wanted to understand how the victory of
the Civil War could be overshadowed by the dread period known as Reconstruction. It is
that motive which inspired the first group of historians who started writing about
Reconstruction, and the body of literature they created would eventually be known as the
Dunning school. The Dunning historians defined the perspective most Americans had
about Reconstruction until the Revisionist school emerged during the 1950s and 1960s.16
The Dunning school was named after Columbia Professor William Archibald
Dunning, who was one of the first historians to write about Reconstruction. Writing in the
late 1890s and early 1900s, he argued that Reconstruction failed because Freedmen were
left in charge of the Southern States. His reasoning, and that of the historians who shared
his perspective, was that freedmen were too inexperienced with politics and that black
politicians were too dim witted to deal with the rapid changes that occurred during the
period of Reconstruction, and that these different incompetent actors led to the rampant
corruption and widespread chaos that doomed Reconstruction. The Dunning school
defended Jim Crow, doubted the intelligence of black people, and generated the historical
frameworks that would rehabilitate the image of slavery and the perception of the
Confederacy in the minds of many Americans. An example of the blatant racism found in
Dunning’s seminal work, Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-1877, occurs his
description of how the freedmen reacted to freedom, “They wandered aimlessly but
happy through the country, found endless delight in hanging about the towns and Union
16
Though in 1935, W.E.B. DuBois’s Black Reconstruction in America providedthe groundwork that the Revisionist school would
use to combat the DunningSchool. However,DuBois’s work was an islandin the stream ofDunningschool literature, andas such it
was preventedfrom gettingproper consideration until the Revisionists began to writein the 1950s.

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camps, and were fascinated by the pursuit of the white man’s culture.”17 Dunning
infantilized and dehumanized the freedmen at almost every juncture he could, and he uses
his own racism as proof of the incompetency of the freedmen.
While the Dunning school was considered the only legitimate perspective on
Reconstruction until the 1950s and 1960s, the seed of the Revisionist school was laid in
1935, when W.E.B. Du Bois published Black Reconstruction in America in 1935. His
work was a problematic work of history, even though it is influential. His stated goal in
writing this book was to decry the Dunning school, and so his book reads more like a
manifesto than a work of history. He also refused to use any archives in his work because
he did not view his work as “original research.”18 That said, his work is still very
important to historical research because he wrote the first book that focused on black
Americans’ positive contributions during Reconstruction. Du Bois argued that the
freedmen in the South were responsible for building the public infrastructure of the
South; it was freedmen who built schools and fought for a more egalitarian South.19 He
also believed that the freedmen in the South did not receive enough support from
Northerners to stave off widespread railroad corruption, the emergence of the Klan, and
the resurgence of the vanquished Aristocracy. Despite all this, he contends that the South
was, with the notable exceptions listed above, actually a very orderly and productive
society. Du Bois’s point was that the South during Reconstruction was a more just
society than the one that came before because of the active role that the freedmen played
during that time period.
17
William ArchibaldDunning, Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-1877,(NewYork, NewYork: Harper & Brothers
Publishers, 1907),11.
18
It shouldbe notedthat he diduse “government reports,proceedings of stateconstitutional conventions, unpublisheddissertations,
andvirtually every relevant monograph. DuBois, Black Reconstructionin America, x.
19
DuBois, Black Reconstructionin America,655-656.

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The effort to rehabilitate the freedmen’s image was continued in 1965 when
Kenneth Stampp wrote The Era of Reconstruction, 1863-1877. This work, while better
grounded in a wider variety of primary sources, still needs to be assessed in the context of
the time in which it was written. During the 1950s, emerging revisionist historians
combatted the Dunning school by re-evaluating the nature of American slavery. At the
forefront of this Revisionist school was Kenneth Stampp, and his book on Reconstruction
was his attempt to legitimize this Revisionist school of thought because he believed that
if he and his compatriots’ analyses of slavery could not be applied Reconstruction then all
their work might be ignored. Stampp made similar claims as Du Bois, but he spent less
time on discussing the Freedmen and more time on the whites who lived North and
South, because he wanted to disprove the notion that Northerners were not, “evil through
and through, and the helpless, innocent white men of the South were totally noble and
pure.”20 He argued that the North abandoned the project of Reconstruction long before
1877, and that the North’s refusal to provide ongoing support for the Southern states
allowed for the eventual regression of the former Confederacy into a government of
oppression. Stampp placed the onus of the failure of Reconstruction on the White
Southerners who participated in the Klan acts and refused to accept an egalitarian society.
Eric Foner solidified the position of the revisionist school in 1988 with his seminal
work, Reconstruction, America’s Unfinished Revolution. This powerful book is still the
standard of the field, and it uses an enormous variety of primary sources combined with
Revisionist literature to paint a holistic portrait of Reconstruction. He charted the exercise
of Reconstruction from 1863-1877, and chronologically looked at all of the issues of the
period. He follows Du Bois’ example and argues that the Freedmen had agency and were
20
Kenneth Stampp, TheEra of Reconstruction1865-1877, (NewYork, NY: Vintage books, 1965), 5.

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able to accomplish a great deal, and like Stampp he argued that the North could have
done more to protect the Freedmen from the Southerners who sought to eradicate blacks’
rights. Foner notes that, “perhaps the remarkable thing about Reconstruction was not that
it failed, but that it was attempted at all and survived as long as it dead.”21 He notes that
the North did not have the will nor the “modern bureaucratic machinery to oversee
southern affairs in any permanent way,” and that the “weakening of Northern resolve”
was due to Reconstruction’s undermining of “free labor and egalitarian precepts at the
heart of Reconstruction policy.”22 In essence, Northerners got tired of Reconstruction
because their ideology did not prove to be effective.
Douglas Egerton’s book, The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of
America’s most Progressive Era, examines Reconstruction from the perspective of the
freedmen who lived through it. This proves a valuable departure from the rest of
Reconstruction literature because he is better able to describe why Reconstruction failed
in the South after the federal government stopped providing much support for the state
governments. White Southerners, in the form of the Ku Klux Klan and local terrorist
bands, sabotaged Reconstruction at every stage by perpetrating atrocities against
Freedmen and Carpetbaggers. As Egerton put it, black activists and reformers knew,
“Reconstruction did not fail; in regions where it collapsed it was violently overthrown by
men who had fought for slavery during the Civil War and continued that battle as guerilla
partisans over the next decade.”23 Reconstruction, in Egerton’s analysis, almost
succeeded in transforming America, yet it was stopped by the extreme violence that
Southerners inflicted onto Freedmen and other Southern reformers.
21
22
23
Douglas Egerton,The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief,Violent History of America’s most Progressive Era, (NewYork, New
York: BloomsburyPress), 19.

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The book that best represents where the field is going in regards to interpretations
of the aftermath of Reconstruction is David Blight’s Race and Reunion: The Civil War in
American Memory. Blight examines, “how Americans remembered their most divisive
and tragic experiences during the fifty-year period after the Civil War.”24 He asserts that
American memories of the Civil War could be divided into three basic visions, the first
one being a reconciliationist vision, “which took root in the process of dealing with the
dead,” the second was a white supremacist vision which took many forms such as
terrorism and would eventually join with the reconciliationist perspective, and the third
was an emancipationist vision which saw the war as the agent that remade the republic
and liberated the enslaved black people of the South.25 His interpretation of the South
winning the peace has become very popular in the field, for it explains why the South
was romanticized.
The Structure of the Argument
A lot of work done on topics concerning Reconstruction touches upon the
antebellum thoughts of Americans during Reconstruction, but the innovation of this paper
is that it explores how those ideas evolved over time, and how those ideas directly
impacted the actions of the people who lived during Reconstruction. The ideologies of
the antebellum period, which can be referred to as free labor and slavery in the abstract,
did not die with the Civil War. These two ideologies, which are both descended from
Lockean principles and can be generally referred to as free labor and slavery in the
abstract, evolved into new iterations which still held onto central assumptions of their
earlier versions, yet developed new features that made them distinct from their previous
24
DavidBlight, Race andReunion:The Civil War and AmericanMemory, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: HarvardUniversityPress,
2001), 1.
25
Blight, Race and Reunion:The Civil War and AmericanMemory,2.

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forms. These ideologies clashed with each other during Reconstruction, and the
Freedmen’s Bureau played a key role in this struggle of worldviews, because its raison
d’être was to impart the values of free labor on the South, and thus morph the South into
a new North. Free laborites’ failure to transform the South led Northerners to re-examine
their dearest held assumptions, and slavery in the abstract’s success in staving off free
labor taught Southerners that their idea of civilization, though changed by war, was just.
The first chapter examines the antebellum ideologies of free labor and slavery in
the abstract, and what those ideologies meant during the antebellum era. The first section
of this paper will explain what free labor ideology was, and why it mattered during
Reconstruction. This chapter will highlight some implications about the free labor
ideology that have been, at times, glossed over in some of the literature. Specifically, this
chapter will highlight the sense of social responsibility that was found among free
laborites in the antebellum period, which later motivated northerners to create the
Freedmen’s Bureau in the first place. The second section examines slavery in the
abstract, which served as the Southern rival to Northern free labor. This section will show
how free labor as an intellectual tradition was linked to slavery in the abstract, and how
slavery in the abstract found a home in proslavery ideology. It will show how slavery in
the abstract, an ideology that only benefited the aristocracy of the South, found a home in
the heart of poor Southern whites. The section will then explore antebellum history from
the perspective of those people who held the slavery in the abstract mindset.
The second chapter focuses on the Freedmen’s Bureau, because it is through that
organ which one can most nakedly see how these ideologies combatted and influenced
each other in the Reconstruction South, thus examining the Bureau allows the historian to

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see just how the South would eventually win the peace. The first section will briefly
outline how the two ideologies evolved following the Civil War, and how both ideologies
approached the issue of the Freedmen’s Bureau. The second section will outline the
process of passing the Freedmen’s Bureau extension in late 1865 through July of 1866.
The section will show the chaotic process and how the various ideologies influenced the
actors in the issue of the Freedmen’s Bureau. It will track how the free laborite
Republicans came to their compromises, and it will show how and why slavery in the
abstract believers were able to influence the entire process. The third section will show
how the various ideologies interacted in the South, and how the Freedmen’s Bureau
actually operated in the South. The various challenges faced by the Bureau Agents and
other Northerners who went South will be explored, and it shall examine why the
Freedmen’s Bureau could not succeed given the circumstances it operated in. The section
with an examination of literature, among other sources, to reveal how Northerners
processed and dealt with the difficult situation they found themselves in.

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Chapter 1: Antebellum Ideologies
It is very hard to understand the antebellum period without understanding the
ideologies that shaped the actions of the people who lived through it. Those two
ideologies, which this paper will refer to as free labor and slavery in the abstract, were
both descended from Lockean philosophy but both drew very different conclusions from
the writings of the famous philosopher. Free labor, which was found in the antebellum
North, was centered on the idea that people should be able to reap the full benefits of
their property, and that is society were organized in such a way as to ensure that, then
things would improve for everyone. Slavery in the abstract, which was found in the
antebellum South, was centered on the idea that oppression was the natural and just state
of mankind, and that a free society required oppression in order for the people in the
society to be free.
Free Labor
The core of free labor ideology was the idea that the economy was merely a
means to achieve a just society, not the result of a just society. Free labor placed, as Foner
once wrote, “Its emphasis on social mobility and economic growth,” and free laborites
believed that economics should be adjusted so that as many people as possible could reap
the benefits of their labor as they could.1 They believed that Northern society, with its
acceptance of capitalist economy and its abundance of natural resources, provided
enough opportunity for anyone to rise above their station, but this did not prevent
Northerners from identifying some of the problems with their society or from coming up
with solutions (many times more limited in scope than required) to those problems.2
1
2

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The roots of free labor can be found in the philosophical writings of John Locke.
The core of John Locke’s philosophy was that civil societies are created in order to
protect everyone’s property, but the important component of his for the purposes of free
labor is how Locke explained where property came from. According to Locke,
Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he
hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes
it his own property.3
In essence, property only exists because people labored on something that was already
present in nature, and because labor is, “the unquestionable property of the labourer, no
man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to.”4 To Locke, it was labor that
created property, and labor that produced any value that a property held. God gave land,
“to the industrious and the rational (and labour was to be his title to it) not to the fancy or
covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious.”5 Labor got people property, and
society was created to ensure that people would be able to keep the benefits of their hard
work.
Free labor also drew on the tradition of the protestant work ethic. The protestant
work ethic, according to Max Weber, was predicated on, “earning more and more money,
combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life,” in order to live
a life in accordance to God’s design.6 This work ethic satisfied the two key components
of the free labor ideology; first, by encouraging the person to keep earning “more and
more money,” it acknowledged that laboring was a key component to living a virtuous
life –one cannot make money if one is not laboring. Second, by avoiding “all spontaneous
3
John Locke, The SecondTreatise of Government, (Indianapolis,IN: Hackett PublishingCompany, 1980, digitizedby Dave Gowan
for IBook), Sect. 27.
4
Locke, The SecondTreatise of Government, Sect. 27.
5
6
Max Weber. The Spirit of Capitalism.1905. 52.

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enjoyment of life,” it proscribes people from engaging in debauchery –because money,
without virtue, leads to sin.
The goal of people who followed the Protestant work ethic was, as Franklin
wrote, to “Be industrious and free; be frugal and free.”7 To work hard meant that
someone was moral, but in order to be free and to enjoy God’s blessing one had to also
be frugal. Benjamin Franklin explained that, “The Second Vice is lying, the first is
running in debt.”8 Debt had moral component in the Protestant work ethic, and debt was
seen as chains for free, god-fearing men. This set of beliefs which formed the Protestant
work ethic -- beliefs that were developed in a time when most people were farmers, and
most of the non-elites who were not farmers were craftsmen – would solidify into the free
labor ideology and identity that would dominate the North with industrialization.
Key to understanding the free labor ideology was the belief that labor itself was
dignified. As Benjamin Franklin, wrote in 1758, “There are no Gains, without Pains.”9
Labor was painful and hard, but for Franklin and the free laborites, it was dignified
because it would make people not only achieve financial stability, but also achieve
personal growth.
Finally, free labor drew on the Protestant Work Ethic belief that anyone can
improve their station if they worked hard enough.10 Free laborites agreed with Franklin
when he wrote, “God gives all Things to Industry.”11 In essence, God only gives things
to people who work for them. In essence, God helps those who help themselves. This
meant that anyone who achieved wealth had earned their wealth by working harder than
7
Benjamin Franklin. Poor Richard Improved, 1758.
8
Franklin.Poor Richard Improved, 1758.
9
10
Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men:The Ideology of the RepublicanParty before the Civil War, 11-15.
11

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other people, and that people who were poor could improve their station if the worked
hard enough. However, if a person remained poor, it was because, as Franklin also wrote,
“Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon overtakes him,”12 One’s wealth was
directly proportional to how hard one worked. If you worked harder than everyone else,
you had more money than everyone else. If you worked harder than everyone else, then
you were more moral then everyone else.
In order to understand free labor, one must assess what free labor meant to the
people who embraced it. Free labor meant many different things to many different
Northerners. To the poor man living in squalor, it meant that they had a way to improve
their lot. Free labor civilization was an idealized society in which everyone reaped the
full benefits of their labor. To the banker and the lawyer living in the Northern
metropolises, it meant that God rewarded many types of labor. To the wealthy merchant
and industrialist, it meant that God approved of the work they were doing and that God
wanted them to keep doing what they were doing. To the factory worker and the farmer,
it meant that someday the economy would be aligned to benefit them more for their long
hours. To the abolitionist and the antislavery activist, it meant that God truly despised
slavery because of how it treated the slave. To the women on the farms or in the factories
of the North, it meant that they were justified in working for money, even if the sexism of
their era prevented them from achieving real independence. To the women at home, it
meant that just because they could not make money, it did not prevent them from doing
work that the Lord would smile upon. To the black men and black women of the North, it
provided a justification for why they deserved to be treated as equals in society, or at the
very least why they should not be treated as slaves.
12

21
Free labor emerged during the industrial revolution as a response to the changes
that swept America during the early to mid-1800s (1820-1850s). The vast majority of
Americans were farmers, so how much they produced directly related to how well they
could live. Most Americans who weren’t farmers were craftsmen, laborers, lawyers,
bankers or some other profession; these people had to sell their services in order to get
paid, so the Protestant work ethic also applied to them. The only people who the
Protestant Work Ethic did not apply to were slaves (because they did not receive
payment) and the affluent (because it was considered unseemly to work if one was rich).
But free labor emerged as an ideology after its central beliefs came under fire; while most
Northerners were still farmers, many of those Americans who were once craftsmen
became wage laborers. Wage labor does not work the way that free labor believes that
labor should work, because a wage laborer does not reap the full benefits of their labor.
Yet, nostalgia among Northerners for the days of Franklin, with the emergence of the
1820 compromise and the Second Great Awakening, turned free labor into a force.13
Everyone had to work, rich and poor, and all should be rewarded for how hard they
worked.
While such beliefs led many to Northerners to be wary of charity or any sort of
governmental help for the poor– after all, they believed God rewards those who worked
hard, and punishes those who do not- it did not compel Northerners to merely accept the
results of the market as signs of divine providence. Some Northerners, such as former
13
Foner, Reconstruction:America’s UnfinishedRevolution, 1863-1877,29. The exact time of theemergence of free labor as a
coherent worldviewis disputed, with some placingits emergence in the 1850s,andothers placingit earlier.Usually that difference
stems from howtheauthorviews the future embrace ofantislavery principles for free laborites in terms of its influence on free labor.
Those who have free labor’s emergencein the 1820s generally believe that free labor was goingto inevitably embrace antislaveryat
some point in the future, meaningthat theonlyreal innovationthat emergedin the 1840s and1850s was the birthof a Northern
sectional conscience. Historians who place its emergencein the 1850s thus value thepolitical transformations of the 1850s more than
those historians who place the emergence ofthe free labor ideology in the1820s. This paperfollows the logic of the former
interpretationbecause of the presence of a coherent anddistinct worldviewamongNorthernintellectuals andjournalists.

22
Pennsylvania Whig Anthony Stewart, “went for levying the highest rates of duty on the
luxuries of the rich and, not of the necessaries of the poor.”14 Such an economic policy
regarding the tariff would, “encourage American manufacturers, and while on the one
hand the poor man finds plenty of employment, and on the other he got his cheap
goods.”15 While Stewart did not suggest a social welfare system, he believed that the
economic policy should be adjusted so that people had an easier time reaping the benefits
of their labor.
Other free laborites, such as Pennsylvanian Thaddeus Stevens, looked towards
education to ensure that everyone had an opportunity to better their lives and reap the
benefits of their labor. Thaddeus Stevens emphasized the moral imperative of this
position when he asked, “How are we to secure for our country [its place in history]?”16
“Not by riches, which some gentlemen so highly value,” Stevens reasoned, but through
education. In order to achieve sufficient education to ensure America’s impact on the
world, the government must, “Extend public aid to,” public schools and universities, to,
“reduce the rate of tuition; In short, render learning cheap and honorable, and he who has
genius, no matter how poor he may be, will find the means of improving it.”17 Stevens
understood that in order for people to best reap the benefits of their labor, they would
have to be educated in which labor best fit the skills they had. While God rewards those
who work hard, those who are able can do their part to ensure that people would have the
best shot at working hard at the things they are best at.
14
AnthonyStewart, “Extracts from theSpeech ofHon A. Stewart,”The Somerset Herald.AndFarmers’ and Mechanics’Register
(Somerset, PA),Tuesday, August 18,1846.
15
Stewart, “Extracts from theSpeech ofHon A. Stewart,” August 18, 1846.
16
Thaddeus Stevens, Speech of Thaddeus Stevens, ESQ, In favor of thebill to establish a school of arts in the city of Philadelphia, and
to endow the colleges andacademies of Pennsylvania, March10, 1838, PHAR 093H. F36 1838,Fromthe State Library of
Pennsylvania.
17
Stevens, Speechof Thaddeus Stevens, ESQ, Infavor of the bill to establish a school of arts in the city of Philadelphia, andto endow
the colleges andacademies of Pennsylvania, March10,1838, PHAR 093 H. F361838.

23
Yet free laborites’ social conscience expanded beyond providing tariffs and
education. To free laborites, “Labor is the only real capitol- productive and creative skill
the only real wealth.”18 Labor, and only labor, mattered in terms of determining one’s
station in society. The “dignity of labor,” that value free laborites so praised, “as it is, is
far different from the dignity of labor as it should be,” for, “there is much evil in the
world.”19 This amorphous “evil” prevented men from obtaining the true fruits of their
labor –thus reducing the dignity of men’s labor – and it was caused by people turning
away from God in their society. One way in which people turned away from God,
according to an article in The Grand River Times,
The Almighty created the earth and gave it to man as a dwelling place where he might be
happy if he would labor – not to another’s disadvantage by accruing more wealth than is
necessary for him, – not for the praise of his fellow men, – not for flimsy pleasures, – not
to further some particular creed by denouncing every other, and in short to labor as
mankind now labor.20
According to this analysis, people turned away from God by taking more than their fair
share and for profiting off of the sins of others.21 People should reap the benefits that they
need, but the society of the time prevented that from happening. According to the article,
people labored to accrue more stuff, not to be more moral. This sort of labor favored
those who profited on sin and suffering and was immoral as a result. The “white-handed,
finely dressed men” who manipulated the laborer into thinking that this state of fairs was
just would only be thwarted once laborers gained an awareness of their own interests and
demand more for their labor.22 Only when everyone embraced the principles that, “labor
value is the only true capital, and that any medium of exchange is valuable only so far as
it truly represents the amount of labor bestowed upon the articles of commerce,” and
18
Carlos Stuart, “Labor; its Wants, Interests, andDuties,” printedin Spirit of the Times (Ironton,OH), March27,1857.
19
T.O. Perkins, “Labor,” The GrandRiver Times (GrandHaven, MI), May26,1852.
20
Perkins,“Labor,” May26, 1852.
21
Perkins,“Labor,” May26, 1852.
22
Stuart, “Labor; its Wants, Interests, andDuties,” March27, 1857.

24
practiced those principles would “prevent in great measure the recurrence of crises like
that which is now convulsing the country.”23 In essence, once free labor civilization was
achieved, all of the problems that afflicted the country would disappear.
In order to truly understand free labor ideology, one needs to look at the historical
circumstances that shaped it. Around the time of the second great awakening –- that time
when free labor emerged as a distinct ideology and identity—also was the genesis of the
two party system that would nurse free labor into a powerful political force.24 Starting
with the 1836 election, there were two parties that would dominate American politics, the
Democratic Party and the Whig Party. These were national parties that dealt with national
issues, and they each contained Northerners and Southerners in their ranks. Democrats
were generally for a lower tariff and against internal improvements. Whigs were
generally for a higher tariff and for internal improvements. Yet both parties heavily
featured Southerners. Eight of the first twelve Presidents, and so was a majority of the
Justices on the Supreme Court by the year 1850. Northerners were annoyed but not
resentful of Southern power in the government until the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which
formalized the death of the Missouri Compromise. Many Northerners saw it as a naked
power grab from the South, and the vehemence was so great between Northerners and
Southerners that it killed the Whig Party and drained the Democratic Party of much of its
Northern talent.25
23
P.B. PlumbandR.J. Hinton, “Labor – Capital – Exchange,”The Kanzas News (Emporia, KS), November 28, 1857.
However, it shouldbe notedthat eventhough free laborites believedin all of these things, that didnot meanthat they all believedthat
the government shouldhave a rolein resolvingthese evils. Infact, none of thearticles citedin the above paragraphsuggest that the
government shouldhave anyrolein addressingthese evils, withthe Stuart articlegoingso far as to claimthat the“evil andremedy,”
for the problems that America faced, “lie deeperthanlegislative skill, inthe very heart oflabor itself – in its disposition, directionand
distribution.” Stuart,“Labor; its Wants, Interests, andDuties,” March 27, 1857
24
Daniel WalkerHowe, What HathGodWrought: The Transformationof America, 1815-1848.(Oxford, UK: OxfordUniversity
Press, 2007),251-253,285-287.
25
RichardSewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States,1837-1860(NewYork, NewYork: W.W.Norton&
Company, 1976),263.

25
The 1856 elections featured the two most prominent parties to emerge from this
chaos, the Republicans and the American “Know-Nothings.” These parties, bolstered by
the former-Democrats who left during the Kansas- Nebraska Act debates, were both
major electoral forces in that election. Unfortunately for the free labor North, the
Republican John C. Fremont and the Know-Nothing Millard Fillmore split the Northern
vote in the presidential election of that year and delivered the prize to Democrat James
Buchanan. The election showed free laborites that if they banded together, they could
combat the influence of the South. In the Republican Party platform, the drafters wrote;
“it is both the right and imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the territories the twin
relics of barbarism – Polygamy and Slavery.”26 The Republican Party platform also
declared that Federal expenditures for internal improvements, “are authorized by the
Congress, and justified by the obligation of the Government to protect the lives and
property of its citizens.”27 The Know-Nothing platform, while not nearly as eloquent as
the Republican Party platform, also displayed free labor sentiments in its declaration
against the South-favoring Pierce administration and its, “re-opening of sectional
agitation; by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.”28 Despite the vitriol that these two
parties exchanged during the election, many members of the Know-Nothings became
Republicans when the former party went under, because the two parties shared many
common beliefs that united most of the free laborites of the North, including a newfound
support for antislavery.29
26
“Republican PartyPlatformof 1856,” Philadelphia, PA, June 18, 1856.
27
“Republican PartyPlatformof 1856,” June 18,1856.
28
“AmericanParty Platform of1856,” Philadelphia,PA,February 25, 1856.
29
Not to be confusedwith abolition.Antislaverywas the belief that slaverywas morallywrongandwould eventually die under the
weight of progress. Abolition,on theother handed, stipulatedthat only theactiveefforts of people coulderadicate slavery. It is also
important tonote that antislavery politicians most often referredtothemselves andtheir ideology as freesoil so that they could
campaign on otherissues besides from Antislavery.Sewell, Ballots for Freedom:Antislavery Politics in the UnitedStates, 1837-1860,
292.

26
This antislavery impulse did not stem from a belief in racial equality. There were
plenty of free laborites who believed that non-Anglo-Saxons were unintelligent, lazy, or
barbaric.30 The popularity of antislavery among free laborites during the mid to late
1850s was a result of Northern fears of the South. Free laborites believed that slavery was
the, “great and radical cause or circumstance” that operated, “in all slave states,” that
retarded, “their increase in population and wealth.”31 This lack of access to wealth
prevented people, in the minds of free laborites, from earning all the wealth they should
have been getting. Horace Greeley’s New York Daily-Tribune echoed the sentiments of
many northerners when it published that there was,
Little doubt that Slavery retards the natural increase in population, lowers the average
standing or common aggregate of common education, depreciates the value of land or
prevents it in increasing in value in the same proportion as land that is wrought by free
labor, and operates generally to reduce and waste the property and general resources of
the community.32
Because wealth was seen as a measure of the morality of a society, Northerners
determined that slavery reduced the morality of the states in which it operated because it
reduced the amount of wealth available to the people in those states. For the majority of
free laborites, antislavery was not a justification for bettering the lot of slaves.
Antislavery was a means for ensuring that white men received all the wealth they could
get.
Antislavery fit in well with free labor thought. Many Northerners thought that,
“What is just to one class of men can never be injurious to another class of men, and what
is unjust to any condition of person in a State, is naturally injurious in some degree to the
30
I. Donnelly, “Reformof the IndianSystem: Speech ofHon. I. Donnelly,” TheSt CloudDemocrat (St. Cloud, MN), March9, 1865.
31
Horace Greeley, “Free Laborversus Slave Labor,” New York Daily Tribune, (NewYork, NY), February26, 1856.
32
Greeley, “FreeLabor versus Slave Labor,”February 26, 1856.

27
whole community.”33 Northerners believed that the Congress at the birth of the Republic
had, “intervened in favor of free labor,” when they wrote the Northwest Ordinance, the
suppressed the African slave trade, “stimulated voluntary immigration from Europe,” and
included a process of naturalization.34 In the late 1850s, Northerners connected these
strains of thought and concluded that the Founders intended for slavery to die eventually,
“Slavery tyrannically assumes a power which Heaven denied,” and because civilization
exists as the expression of God’s will, slavery is “barbarism.”35 Slavery was barbaric
because it prevented slaves from reaping the benefit of their own labor; in a free labor
society, the society that God demanded, everyone had to reap what they sowed. While
very few free laborites embraced abolitionism – some even likened it to treason – many
embraced its claims of the destructive and reactionary nature of slavery.36 Slavery had
become, in the minds of a great many Northerners, the “evil” which prevented the ideal
free labor society from taking shape. As future Supreme Court Justice Salmon P. Chase
declared to the people of Ohio that there was a, “contest between Freedom and Slavery,”
and that freedom had to win.37
Slavery in the Abstract
Free labor was not the only ideology that existed in the United States that would
have a major impact on Reconstruction. Slavery in the abstract, a distinct ideology in its
33
William Seward, “Great Speech ofSenatorSeward. Deliveredin the UnitedStates Senate: Wednesday,February29th
, 1860,” The
Cass County Republican (Dowagiac, MI), March15, 1860.
34
William Seward, “Speech of Wm.H. Seward, of NewYork, on the Lecompton Constitution,” TheKanzas News (Emporia, Kansas),
March 27, 1858.
35
Charles Sumner, “The Barbarism ofSlavery,” June 4, 1860, publishedin pamphlet form,Washington,D.C: Thaddeus Hyatt, 1860.
36
Joseph Bingham,“Articles on theOrigin andHistory ofthe Differences between theNorthern andSouthern Sections of the United
States which have resultedin a Civil War,”IndianaState Sentinel (Indianapolis, IN), July 17, 1861.
37
Salmon Chase, “Speechtothe people ofOhio,” 1854,Salmon P. Chase Papers (Collection0121), The Historical Societyof
Pennsylvania.

28
own right, found a home in the slave-holding South. Like any other ideology, it is hard to
determine precisely when it emerged, but one can determine the general contours of its
logic. Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, from whom the term is borrowed,
defined slavery in the abstract as “the doctrine that declared slavery or a kindred system
of personal servitude the best possible condition for all labor regardless of race.”38 This
definition is useful in two different ways. First, it acknowledges the essential class
distinctions that defined the South and were the basis of Southern society before race-
slavery was implemented. Second, it acknowledges why non-slaveholding Southerners
would support an ideology and a slave system that kept them in a society that prevented
social mobility – non-slaveholding whites were provided an assurance that they were free
despite that not actually being the case, and they were provided with the understanding
that if they should ever improve their position, their new station would be protected.
The logic of this ideology was best expressed by David Hackett Fischer, when he
wrote that the, “ideas of hegemonic liberty conceived of freedom mainly as the power to
rule, and not to be overruled by others.”39 Fischer noted that when this logic took root in
the new world, it was during an era in which profound class differences were the norm.
During the time that Fischer wrote, this ideology was most common among the elite of a
society, because they were well-versed in the writings of John Locke.
Locke, who helped inspire free labor, was also an inspiration for the slavery in the
abstract ideology. According to Locke, “men, when they enter into society, give up the
equality, liberty, and executive power they had in the state of nature,” in order so that
38
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese andEugene Genovese. Slavery in White andBlack, Class and Race in theSouthernSlaveholders’ New
World Order. (NewYork, NewYork: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2008). 1.
39
DavidHackett Fischer,Albion’s Seed, Four BritishFolkways in America,(NewYork, NewYork: OxfordUniversity Press, 1989),
411.

29
society can, “secure everyone’s property.”40 Locke only argued that everyone had an
equal right to property, – unless the common good demanded that the property be taken –
he did not argue that everyone should have equal amounts of liberty.41 In Locke’s
formulation, property and liberty are intrinsically linked, and because that relationship
exists, the state’s primary responsibility was to ensure that people’s property would be
maintained, because “the great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into
commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their
property,” because it is property that ensures liberty.42 Preservation is key word in that
quote, because it meant that the existing social order of Locke’s time, the one that
featured vast discrepancies in property ownership, was morally sound. If the preservation
of property is the raison d’être for society’s existence, then that means that the practical
purpose of society was to maintain the class structure that already existed.
But Locke went even further than that, for not only did he write that society
should society defend the elite’s vast property ownership because the purpose of society
is to protect the property of its members, he also wrote that the elites had a right to the
entirety of their land. “Right and conveniency,” according to Locke, “went together; for
as a man had the right to all he could employ his labor upon, so he had no temptation to
labour for more than he could make use of.”43 According to Locke, so long as someone
could have usage of a property, that person was entitled to that property. If the vast
majority of people did not have a lot of property, then that meant that the vast majority of
people were not clever enough, or willing enough, to acquire and use more property
properly. According to Locke, “this left no room for controversy about the title, nor for
40
41
42
Locke, The SecondTreatise of Government,, Sect.124.
43

30
encroachment on the right of others,” because it meant that those who had the property
deserved the property, and those who did not deserve the property did not have it.44
Locke also provided the intellectual justification for slavery that antebellum elites
would base the slave society itself on. According to Locke, “slaves, who being captives
in a just war, are by the right of nature subjected to the absolute dominion and arbitrary
power of their masters.”45 Because those who became slaves, “forfeited their lives, and
with it all their liberties, and lost all their estates,” they were, “not capable of any
property” and they could not, “be considered as any part of civil society.”46 In essence,
the condition of slavery can only be brought about by violence, and that once someone is
in the condition of slavery, they are considered dead to the civil society that their master
belongs to.
This understanding of slavery, which was used by the Southern elites to justify
slavery, when taken in conjunction with the other Lockean principles described before, is
essential to understanding the character of Southern society. First, because a slave could
only be a produced by a just war, it meant that Southern society itself existed in a
perpetual state of just war, because if Southern society did not exist in a perpetual state of
just war, then slaveholders would not have a right to acquire new slaves. Second, because
a slave could not be considered a part of civil society, and because that civil society is in
a perpetual state of just war, that meant that a slave’s children were also slaves, because
those children would naturally be inclined to join the side opposing the civil society that
enslaved their parents, and one can only acquire slaves in a situation of just war. Finally,
because of the hegemonic liberty that Fischer described, and the elites of the South
44
45
46

31
ascribed to, could only exist in a situation in which there was continual oppression
(freedom from oppression required the freedom to oppress), that meant that slaves, as the
group of people who could forever be oppressed, had to exist in order to maintain the
liberty of owners of the poor whites who could also oppress those slaves.47
These Lockean ideas became the undergirding logic of slavery in the abstract.
Aristocrats became morally superior to non-aristocrat Southerners, because the aristocrats
of Locke’s day passed their lands onto the aristocrats of the antebellum period, and the
ownership of land was directly tied into the intelligence, morality, and willfulness of the
owner. Those who were not aristocrats had the potential to be aristocrats if they were ever
able to acquire land, and thus they were invested in the potential that they too might
eventually be able to oppress the masses. Slavery became race-based, which meant that
even if the vast majority of poor whites would never improve their station, they would
know that they were free because there were always slaves that could be oppressed. It is
at that moment in which proslavery emerged out of slavery in the abstract, but it is nearly
impossible to separate the two from each other once proslavery appeared. The majority of
Southerners considered themselves proslavery, but that also meant that they held onto the
assumptions of slavery in the abstract because proslavery borrowed heavily from slavery
in the abstract.
Proslavery believers, though they shared some of the Lockean principles that
inspired free labor, took Lockean understandings of labor to different conclusions. The
Edgefield Advertiser showed that people who held the proslavery ideology were like the
47
This issue of paranoia andAmericanidentity/politics is not newto thefield, andmany historians have contributedvaluable insights
to paranoia’s influence onthe UnitedStates.RichardHofstadter’s essay, “The ParanoidStyle in American Politics,” is one ofthe best
examinations ofthe presence of paranoia in American politics for he argues that paranoiawas endemic toAmericanpolitics since at
least the Revolutionaryera.RichardHofstadter,“The ParanoidStyle in AmericanPolitics,” foundin Harper’s Magazine, November,
1964.

32
free laborites, when it asserted, “Labor is the source of all wealth. It is the mother of all
capitol.”48 However, proslavery did not use that belief to promote an equitable system.
Instead, people who held the proslavery perspective took that notion and said that, “men
desire to have not only all the necessaries,” and luxuries of life, therefore a system is just
if it allows men to, “strive to command the labor of others that they themselves might
exist in comfort, as well as be able to enjoy all the luxuries of this world, without any toil
of their own.”49 This analysis of how a civilization should run is a natural outgrowth of
the idea of freedom from oppression, freedom to oppress – after all, all people strive for
comfort, meaning comfort is a freedom that few can achieve, thus one needs to use other
people’s labor to obtain that comfort. However, one could acquire other people’s labor,
“by superior intellect, by cunning, or by force.”50 In essence, it is morally right to try to
be comfortable, and it is morally justified to forcefully acquire and abuse others in order
to achieve that comfort, because that comfort is evidence of the goodness of the life that a
person leads. The means used to achieve that comfort are not important in determining
the morality of the person trying to achieve that comfort, because having that level of
comfort evidenced the virtue of that individual.
Belief in these ideas necessitated expansion, because these ideas implied that
there was a scarcity of resources. In order to ensure that poor whites would continue to
support the existing social order in the South, proslavery elites needed to at least seem
like they provided opportunities for poor whites to improve their lot. As articulated by
proslavery President James Polk during the Mexican-American War,
48
William Durisoe, “Revival of the Slave Trade-No. VII,” TheEdgefieldAdvertiser, (Edgefield. SC), March 16, 1859.
49
Durisoe, “Revival ofthe Slave Trade-No.VII,” March 16, 1859.
50
Durisoe, “Revival ofthe Slave Trade-No.VII,” March 16, 1859.

33
The progress of our country in her career of greatness, not only in the vast expansion of
our territorial limits, and the rapid increase in our population, but in resources and wealth,
and in the happy condition of our people,”
was evidence of the rightness of the United States in its mission against Mexico.51 Polk’s
statement reveals the expansionist tendencies inherent in proslavery ideology because it
directly links different types of increases with improving the “happiness” of Americans.
To proslavery activists like Polk, the United States needed more territory, people, and
money because the nature of their ideology made them understand that there was an
inherent scarcity of resources. It is this understanding of scarcity that would lead
proslavery men and women, such as William Walker, to try and expand the territory of
the United States.52 They believed that if the United States stopped expanding, then the
people would become unhappy with the lack of opportunities available. What the people
did after they stopped having new opportunities provided the urgency of elites to push for
more land and resources.
The proslavery ideology also had religious undertones. Wake Forest’s
Commencement speaker in 1846 spoke of the three types of education essential to all
people: “professional education,” “moral and political education,” and “religious
education.”53 These three types of education dealt with the skills of a chosen profession,
the duties of being a citizen, and knowledge of the “divine truth” of its teachings.
However, all of these types of education must be taught through the lens of “learning
sanctified by religion,” because, “of all calamities which have fallen upon men or nations
none have been so bitter or destructive as unsanctified learning.”54 In essence, to obtain
51
James Polk, “President’s Message toCongress,”The Portage Sentinel (Ravenna,OH), December 16, 1846.
52
Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams:Slavery and Empire in theCottonEmpire (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press,
2013), 381.
53
W.W. Holden, “Mr. Venable’s Address, Deliveredbefore the Education Societyat Wake Forest College, at the Commencement in
June, 1846,” TheNorth CarolinaStandard (Raleigh, NC), September 9, 1846.
54
Holden, “Mr. Venable’s Address, Deliveredbefore theEducationSocietyat Wake Forest College, at the Commencement in June,
1846,” September 9, 1846.

34
knowledge that is not in line with God’s teachings is dangerous because it can push
individuals and societies away from God. If, however, people learn the proper kind of
knowledge, then that means individuals and societies can be brought closer to God’s
design.
Religion in the South, like religion in the North, had an economic and political
component to it. “Learning sanctified by religion” in the Southern context was distinctly
proslavery.55 According to a popular Southern intellectual named Josiah Priest, the
righteousness of slavery can be traced back to the moment when Noah cursed Ham and
his race (which, according to Priest, was black) because, “The appointment of this race of
men, to servitude and slavery was a judicial act of God, or in other words, divine
judgment.” Because race-slavery was ordered by God,56 that meant that Southerner’s as,
“Christian men,” could not, “give up the institution – we dare not resign the trust of
governing that race, who have been assigned to us to preserve from barbarity and
paganism,” and that the continued presence of slavery in Southern society, “will forever
make the South a nation of heroes, and, if need be, of martyrs. Heroic martyrdom had
never been subdued.”57 In the eyes of these intellectuals and other preachers, slavery was
a duty that the South had to maintain. While the rest of the world moved towards
abolition, the South would remember God’s decry and defend slavery.
South Carolina Senator and proslavery spokesman John C. Calhoun, in his
famous speech concerning slavery, best expressed this idea of the divine righteousness of
slavery. Calhoun, holder of the proslavery ideology, believed the South and its peculiar
55
Holden, “Mr. Venable’s Address, Deliveredbefore theEducationSocietyat Wake Forest College, at the Commencement in June,
1846,”September9, 1846.
56
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese andEugene Genovese, Slavery in White andBlack, 33. Various schools ofthought onhowthis happened
permeatedSouthern theological discourse.Some preachers agreedwith Priest that slavery hadits root in Noah’s curse onHam, and
others tracedit tothe MarkofCain. However,what most Southerntheologians couldagree on was that race-slaverywas justified, and
a few Southern theologians also believedthat all races couldbe rightfully enslaved.
57
Peter Torre, “Is SouthernSociety Worth Preserving?”The SouthernQuarterly Review, n.s. 3 (1851),217.

35
institution, “where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other
physical difference, as well as intellectual, are brought together,” is, “instead of an evil, a
good – a positive good.”58 Calhoun, one of the intellectual champions of proslavery,
perfectly articulated how most Southerners viewed the society in which they lived.
However, this statement also revealed the slavery in the abstract logic and religious
sentiments that buttressed the proslavery ideal. Calhoun noted in that same speech that,
“there never has existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the
community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other,” but he also declared
that the other in Southern society, also known as slaves, were better treated than the poor
whites of Europe.59 Calhoun’s slavery in the abstract logic is evidences by his belief the
natural and just relationship between human beings is oppression, Calhoun’s religious
point, when he made the comparison between the South and Europe, was that the slave
aristocrats practiced charity in regards to their slaves, and charity is a biblical virtue.
European society, and free labor society by extension, was uncharitable towards the least
of its number, and therefore was sinful. Calhoun went even further than that when he
declared, “Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to
the present day, attained a condition so civilized and improved, not only physically, but
morally and intellectually.”60 Slavery made the slave more moral. His speech revealed
apocalyptic undertones when he discussed a South in which the peculiar institution was
removed, for after it was removed “the next step would be to raise the negroes to a social
and political equality with the whites; and that being effected, we would soon find the
58
John C. Calhoun, "Speech onthe Reception ofAbolition Petitions,Deliveredin the Senate, February 6th, 1837," in RichardR.
Cralle, ed., Speeches of JohnC. Calhoun, Deliveredin the House of Representatives and in theSenate of the UnitedStates (NewD.
Appleton,1853), 625-33.
59
Calhoun, "Speechon theReceptionof AbolitionPetitions, Deliveredin the Senate,February 6th, 1837," in RichardR. Cralle,
ed., Speeches of John C. Calhoun, Deliveredin the Houseof Representatives andin the Senate of the United States,625-33.
60

36
present condition of the two races reversed.”61 The implication of his speech is that a
Union in which slavery is eliminated is an immoral Union, because slavery made the
master and the slave both more moral. If that were upset with emancipation, then that
would mean that the society would be pushed away from God and disaster would ensue.
It is this two-pronged idea of Southern civilization – that their civilization is the
righteous civilization and that because other civilizations are not like the South they are
ungodly – leads to the final element key to understanding the slavery in the abstract
mindset, paranoia. Proslavery elites pressured Congress to pass gag rules between 1836-
1844 that stated variations of, “that all petitions, memorials, resolutions, propositions or
papers related in any way,” on the subject of slavery would not be, “debated, presented,
heard, or referenced,” inside the U.S. Congress.62 John Calhoun justified this action when
he said, “if we do not defend ourselves then no one else will; if we yield we will be more
and more pressed as we recede,” because, “a large portion of the Northern States consider
slavery to be a sin, and would consider it as an obligation of conscience to abolish it if
they should feel themselves in any degree responsible for its continuance.”63 In
Calhoun’s and other Southerner’s reckonings, the South was isolated and besieged by
Northerners who sought to destroy their way of life.
But proslavery meant different things to its adherents. To the plantation lord of
the South, it meant that they were the divinely ordained rulers and defenders of true
republicanism. To the poor white men who would form the bulk of the Confederate army
and to the poor white women who would pressure their husbands to fight for the
61
62
“GagRule” Resolution, December 21, 1837.
63

37
Confederacy, the ideology provided an irresistible justification for slavery. For the
upcountry folks who would oppose the Confederacy, it served as evidence that they were
considered little better than slaves to the plantation elite. To plantation mistresses, it
meant that they were moral actors in a world that seemed to undervalue them. To the
slave, it was a justification for a reality that few believed would ever fade.
Proslavery alongside free labor, though, only emerged as coherent ideologies
during the Second Great Awakening.64 The stresses of the boom and bust economy, when
mixed with the realization of the differences between North and South by people who
held the proslavery ideology, solidified a unified Southern political raison d’être. The
mission of the people who held the proslavery ideal understood that their primary
political objective, regardless of any other opinions, had to be the defense of the Southern
way of life and its own idea of liberty.
Many historians of the era would question the idea of a unified South before the
Civil War. After all, there were significant differences between upland Southerners and
tidewater Southerners, and there were severe class differences that divided the rich and
poor whites against each other. Even the two party system after the Second Great
Awakening – that moment when proslavery emerged from slavery in the abstract
ideology – featured Southerners splitting their votes between the Democrats and the
Whigs. However, looking at the voting patterns of Southerners obscures the deeper trends
that showed Southern unity on the most important issues. They consistently pressured the
country to pursue war and expand its territory, and they situated themselves in a central
position so that they proved essential. They were dominant on the national level. The
64
Howe, What Hath God Wrought: TheTransformationof America,1815-1848., 477-478.

38
South produced half of the Presidents of the United States and majorities of the Justices
of the Supreme Court during the antebellum period.
The fact that abolition was akin to treason in the minds of many Americans, North
and South, is further evidence of the effectiveness of the South’s control of the political
process (which is a necessity under proslavery ideology). Politically minded people were
aware of the dangers that a successful abolition push would pose to the Union, after all,
Calhoun declared that secession was a possible reaction to threats to the slave order as
early as 1837.65 Yet from the late 1830s until the Civil War, there was one other group of
people who also thought that disunion was a potential solution to the slave question, and
those people were abolitionists. It should be noted that not all abolitionists were in favor
of disunion, but the official position of the William Lloyd Garrison’s led American Anti-
Slavery Society towards the Republic was, “to dissolve the union between Northern and
Southern states.”66 Garrison’s Liberator would frequently publish editorials talking about
the evils of continued Union, so in the minds of many Northerners, abolition was
associated with destroying the Union they cared about.
Yet, as the years went on, the South felt more and more isolated. The North’s
population dwarfed the population of the South by 1850, and it was increasingly evident
that the South would become the minority partner in the American Republic should
things remain as they were. This context is important to understanding why Southerners
still felt anxious about their condition in the Republic, even when the 1850 acts and the
Kansas-Nebraska act tipped the scales in the favor of the South. Yet, despite all this, the
defining moment of appeasement to the South occurred when Dredd Scott was decided.
65
Calhoun, "Speech onthe Reception ofAbolition Petitions,Deliveredin the Senate, February6th, 1837,"in RichardR. Cralle,
66
RonaldWaters, The Antislavery Appeal:American Abolitionafter 1830, (NewYork, NewYork: W.W. Norton & Company,1978),
6.

39
Dred Scott concerned whether a slave could be considered free if the slave spent
any time in a free state. The Supreme Court decision, written by proslavery Marylander
Roger Taney, famously declared that black people, “are not included, and were not
intended to be, included under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore
claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures for
citizens of the United States.”67 This line legally made race-based citizenship
constitutional, but the effect of that is momentous to those who hold the proslavery
ideology. If one holds the perspective of liberty that requires that there always has to be
an oppressor and oppressed, then abolition, followed by citizenship, is a dire threat to that
ideology. However, if it is declared that an, “inferior class of beings, who had been
subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not,” only had, “rights and
privileges,” that, “those who held the power and the government might choose to grant
them.”68 This meant that there would forever be an underclass, which meant that there
would always be a class of people for the lowest rung of proslavery society to oppress.
The decision also reflected the imperialist nature of proslavery ideology. Chief
Justice Taney declared that, “Congress cannot do indirectly what the Constitution
prohibits directly,” in banning slavery in the territories because, “owners of slave
property,” would be,
Effectually excluded from removing into the Territory of Louisiana north of thirty-six
degrees thirty minutes, as if the law declared that owners of slaves, as a class, should be
excluded, even if their slaves are left behind.69
In essence, if the Union blocked slavery from the territories, then the Union blocked
certain citizens from entering the territories. This prohibition on property was
67
Dred Scott v Sandford,60 US393,(1857).
68
Dred Scott v Sandford,(1857).
69
Dred Scott v Sandford,(1857).

40
unconstitutional because it impacts the rights of citizens to move between the states. The
right of someone to move about the country implied that if someone is free to move about
the country, then someone’s property is also free to move about the country. While the
Supreme Court declared this ruling only applied to the territories, one could logically take
this argument and apply it to the states. This post-Dred Scott reality potentially allowed,
as articulated by the supportive editorial found in The Edgefield Advertiser, “negroes
bought and sold in Boston Commons like in days gone by.”70 This was a fantasy for those
who held the proslavery mindset because it would eliminate the only real threat to slavery
in the abstract; free labor. If one could not prevent slavery from entering the states, then
that means that slavery would spread throughout the union and the idea of free labor
would have to adapt to that reality or die. With Dred Scott, the South was in position to
dominate the Republic forever.
The South did not celebrate its victory for very long, for in 1859, John Brown
raided Harper’s Ferry. In the process of his attack, he played on all of the deepest held
fears of proslavery Americans. First, here was a free laborite abolitionist who wanted to
destroy the South and its institutions. When Scottish poet Charles Mackay wrote “A Plain
Man’s Philosophy” and set it in the first person perspective, he almost perfectly captured
the views of the late John Brown, “I hate selfish knave, and a proud contented slave, and
a lout who’d rather borrow than toil.”71 Mackay outlined the very basics of the free labor
ideology, and John Brown certainly believed them. As he said during his closing
statement at his treason trial, “I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have
always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but
70
William Durisoe, “Non-interference the First Remedy,” TheEdgefieldAdvertiser (Edgefield, SC), December 14, 1859.
71
Charles Mackay, “A Plain Man’s Philosophy,” 1859.

41
right.”72 It was very easy for Southerners to see how other Northerners could take the
logical conclusions of their ideology and use it to justify abolition, and abolition was
treason in the eyes of Southerners.
His raid on Harper’s Ferry was an attempt to get the slaves of the South to liberate
themselves from their chains. Southern whites were united in keeping slaves in their
place, and this unity provided the cohesion that allowed Southern Society to survive.73
Southerners were apoplectic and terrified at the idea of, “MUTINY and MURDER by
NEGRO SLAVES against and upon their owners,” because non-slaveholding
Southerners dreamed of owning slaves and any slave revolt would put theoretically put
all Southern whites in danger.74 Despite John Brown’s insistence that he had no intention
of exciting, “slaves to revolt, or make any general insurrection,” it was clear that his
actions could have had this effect.75 What were proslavery activists to think, when John
Brown seized an armory with the intention to give slaves the weapons in order for the
slaves to, “defend their freedom but not be incited to insurrection?”76 Not only could
Northerners fall into the extreme of abolition, but also if they did they would be willing
to use the peculiar institution that buttressed Southern Society to tear it down.
The worst aspect for Southerners, perhaps, was that the North showered love upon
John Brown after his execution. As one Southern newspaper put it, “The North has
openly avowed its sympathy with old John Brown – has made a demi-god of the vulgar
vagabond,” and, “has canonized him, in its presses and its pulpits, as a martyr and a saint,
and declared that his conduct was worthy of Christian benison, instead of shameful
72
John Brown, “Statement tothe Court,”November, 2,1859. New York Herald (NewYork, NewYork), November3rd, 1859.
73
W.W. Holden, “AdVolerum Taxation,Speech ofMr. Bledsoe,” The NorthCarolina Standard (Raleigh,NC), March 16, 1859.
74
AlfredPrice andDavidFulton, “More andConvincingProof ofMillardFillmore’s Abolitionism,”Wilmington Journal
(Wilmington, NC), October 30, 1848.
75
Brown, “Statement tothe Court,” November3rd, 1859.
76
DavidM. Potter,“The ImpendingCrisis,” (NewYork, NY: Harper Collins Publishing, 1976), 366.

42
death.”77 This was a disturbing moment for Southerners because it showed that
Northerners were willing to sympathize with the violent actors that the South had long
believed would be condemned.78 While it was evident to some proslavery elite that
slavery, legally, would spread from sea to shining sea, it also became evident that the
North was not going to accept this fact quietly. The North had the resources, the
manpower, and the will to potentially reverse the trend of legal slavery expansion. The
proslavery ideal was in jeopardy, and it was the safety of that ideology in the United
States that kept the South in the Union. This compelled the Southerners to leave the
Union following the election of the free laborite Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
The South’s attempt to defend proslavery would send 600,000 Americans to their deaths.
77
Durisoe, “Non-interference the First Remedy,” December14,1859.
78
William Durisoe, “The NorthandoldJohn Brown,” TheEdgefieldAdvertiser (Edgefield, SC), December 14, 1859.

43
Chapter 2: To Build a Nation
The war to save the Union did far more than save the Union. In many ways, the
Civil War and Reconstruction redefined the American nation. After the Civil War, there
were very few people who believed that the Union should return to the way it operated in
the antebellum period, because the way it operated helped bring about that cataclysmic
war for Union. The war deeply impacted the two antebellum ideologies of free labor and
proslavery, and the adherents of both ideologies struggled with the implications of their
beliefs. The struggle between these two ideologies can best be examined through the lens
of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and it is that struggle that determined the outcome of
Reconstruction.
From Antebellum to Post-War
The war was over, and the Union was saved. Thousands had died, but the slaves
were now freed. Americans grasped to understand the trauma that the Republic went
through, and in their effort to do so, they had to explore their own thoughts and feelings.
This exploration led to shifts in the two major antebellum ideologies, free labor and
proslavery. The people who held these worldviews determined the course of
Reconstruction, and the choices they made that led to Reconstruction’s conclusion were
shaped by the changes that occurred in their own ideologies.
For free labor, the largest shift the ideology was the belief that land ownership
was important to maintain the peace. While it is true that free labor did not develop a
social welfare conscience akin to the one that would inspire the Great Society in the
1960s, some free laborites developed a belief that the freedmen should be provided with

44
land to ease their transition into being nonslaves.1 The free laborites who held this belief
also believed that if the land of former plantation owners was distributed to the freedmen,
then the former plantation owners would be unable to reestablish their system of
oppression in the South. While the discussion of land reform was effectively ended in the
summer of 1865, the intellectual processes that led free labor to adopt that view would
still impact how free laborites approached Reconstruction.
Following the Civil War, the proslavery perspective that guided the Union into
the war adapted to the fact that there were no longer any slaves. There were no serious
attempts by Southerners to reinstitute slavery as it existed in the antebellum period, but
that truth obscures the fact that the logic of slavery in the abstract was still prevalent
among Southerners. Even though slavery would never return, Southerners scrambled to
maintain as much of the old order as they could. This is the context one needs to
understand in order to see why Southerners organized and implemented the Black Codes
and supported the Ku Klux Klan so soon after the Civil War concluded. Even though a
return to slavery in the antebellum context was impossible, that did not mean that a return
to something resembling slavery in the abstract was equally important, and Southerners
knew it. This new ideology, which was created by merging the racism of proslavery with
the intellectual justifications of slavery in the abstract, will be referred to through the rest
of this paper as proslavery in the abstract.
1
Foner, Reconstruction:America’s UnfinishedRevolution, 1863-1877,169-235-236. Foneris correct when he asserts that,“only a
handful stressedthe landquestion as persistentlyandforcefully as Stevens” andthe otherradicals who pushedforlanddist ribution
(236). However, Foneralso asserts that, “the idea of remakingSouthern society” through, “a plan ofnational actiontooverturnthe
plantation systemandprovide the former slaves with homesteads,” andthat may not have actuallybeen the case. (235)Within section
four of An act to establisha Bureaufor the Relief of Freedmen andRefugees states that the Commissioner, withthe President’s
approval, “shall haveauthority to set apart, for the use of loyal refugees andfreedmen, such tracts of landwithinthe insurrectionary
states as shall have been abandonedor towhich the UnitedStates shall have acquiredtitle by sale or confiscation,” andthat the loyal
refugees andfreedmen wouldbe able to purchase the landafterrentingit for three years. U.S., Statutes at Large,Treaties and
Proclamations of the UnitedStates of America, vol. 13(Boston,Massachusetts, 1866), pp. 507-509. TheHouse andSenatepassedthe
bill, includingthis clause, andPresident Lincolnsignedit into lawon March 3rd
, 1865. Whiletherewere fierce debates in Congress
about the Bureau, thebill was eventually passed, which indicates that the desire toreformthe Southwas not quite as extremeas Foner
indicates. Moderates might not have likedit,but that didnot mean that its inclusionwas prohibitive for them to pass legislation.

45
But evolved forms of antebellum ideologies were not the only forces that shaped
how that Reconstruction would work. Key to the Reconstruction drama was the issue of
memory of the Civil War, and David Blight’s work on the subject is essential to
understanding memory’s effect on Reconstruction. According to Blight, the three visions
of memory that Americans had about the Civil War during Reconstruction were the
emancipationist vision, the white supremacist vision, and the reconciliationist vision.2
The emancipationist vision, as outlined by Blight, found its home among the
Freedmen and the Radical Republicans, who believed that the Civil War was, “the
reinvention of the republic, and the liberation of blacks to citizenship and Constitutional
equality.”3 Blight traces the popularization of this strain of memory to President
Lincoln’s opening sentence of his Gettysburg address, “Four score and seven years ago,
our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”4 According to Blight,
Lincoln saw that the great challenge of rebirth from the fires of the war and its aftermath
would be, “the challenge of human equality in a nation, ready or not, governed by and for
all of its people.”5 This vision of what the war meant was only truly held by free
laborites, because at the core of free labor ideology is the belief that anyone could
improve their lot in a truly just society. To those free laborites who followed their own
ideology to its logical conclusion, legal equality was the only conclusion the war could
have because legal equality was the only way to ensure all Americans had an equal
chance of reaping the full benefits of their labor. However, just because this perspective
2
3
4
Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863, in Basler,ed, CollectedWorks of Abraham Lincoln, Vol 7, 23,
1953.
5
Blight, Race and Reunion:The Civil War and AmericanMemory,12-13.

46
was logical did not mean that it was popular, and Blight shows how the emancipationist
vision of history was eventually repressed before the twentieth century.
The white supremacist vision, as outlined by Blight, was more prevalent in the
Union during the Reconstruction era than its emancipationist counterpart, and the white
supremacist vision, “took many forms early, including terror and violence, locked arms
with reconciliationists of many kinds,” and would eventually articulate, “A segregated
memory of its Civil War on Southern terms.”6 People who embraced the white
supremacist vision of history believed that empowering the Freedmen was a mistake,
because, in the words of Democratic Representative Andrew Rogers of New Jersey, the
federal government, “was made for white men and white women,” and that the attempts
to create, “social equality between the black race and the white race” would never receive
acceptance among Americans.7 This perspective helps explain the emergence of the Ku
Klux Klan and the eventual creation and embrace of the Dunning School of history,
because the white supremacist vision found in many places in the United States following
the Civil War existed because most Americans during Reconstruction were racist.8 While
elements of the white supremacist vision was found amongst many free laborites, the
entirety of the white supremacist vision was almost universally embraced by proslavery
in the abstract Americans.
The final vision Blight outlines, known as reconciliation, was an amorphous blob,
“which took root in the process of dealing with the dead from so many battlefields,
prisons, and hospitals” that appeared during the Civil War.9 This vision of history was
interested in reunion and “the tangled relationship between two profound ideas – healing
6
7
Index to the Cong. Globe, 39th
Cong, 1st
Sess. 2538(1866).
8
9

47
and justice,” and it merged with various emancipationist and white supremacist memories
of what the Civil War meant.10 Reconciliationist tendencies were nearly universal among
Americans, because everyone believed that a new nation should emerge from the ruins of
the Civil War – the disagreement among people who held reconciliationist tendencies
was the character of the nation that would be created.
These different visions were shaped by the realities of post-war circumstances.
The North had won the war, but now it need needed to show that it could win the peace.
“Neither race,” according to Columbia, South Carolina’s The Daily Phoenix, appreciated,
“their new relative positions,” in the post-slavery South.11 Freedmen were considered
uppity and inexperienced; the Southern whites they lived alongside were dumbstruck by
the idea of legal equality of the races, even if very few free laborites actually fought for
that goal. The blame for that shortcoming, in the minds of most white Americans, laid
with the freedmen. As one of the more liberal Northerners put it when he was addressing
a group of freedmen, “You have heard many stories about your condition as freemen.
You do not know what to believe; you are talking too much; waiting too much; asking for
too much.”12 Many Northerners believed that it was the responsibility of the Freedmen to
work out how they would now fit into society, because Northerners assumed that, given
enough time, Southerners would come along to the free labor ideology and everything
would work smoothly.
Northerners assumed that it would take time for the freedmen to get used to the
realities of freedom, but their true divide would emerge in how much time, and how
10
11
Julian Selby, “Developingour Resources,” The Daily Phoenix (Columbia,SC), October5, 1865.
12
Capt. Charles C. Souleto Maj. Gen'l. O. O. Howard, 12June 1865,enclosinganaddress “To the FreedPeopleof Orangeburg
District dated June 1865,” Letters Received, series 15, WashingtonHeadquarters, Bureauof Refugees, Freedmen,& Abandoned
Lands, RecordGroup 105, National Archives.

48
much effort Northerners should spend on helping the freedmen learn the intricacies of
freed life. As Captain Charles Soule of the Freedmen’s Bureau stated, “You must
remember that your children, your old people, and the cripples, belong to you to support
now, and all that is given to them is so much pay to you for your work,” was common,
and realistic advice given to the freedmen.13 Many Northerners were content with leaving
the situation at that; the Blacks were now free, and the work of the white man in regards
to the Freedman was done.
Other Northerners believed that they had a responsibility to help the Freedmen
integrate into the responsibilities of freedom. According to The Antislavery Standard,
Northerners did not believe, “in an English freedom, that trusts the welfare of the
dependent class to the good will and moral sense of the upper class,” and this is why
Northerners could not trust Southern aristocrats.14 Even if free laborites did not
understand the full extent of the South’s antebellum society, they did understand some of
the logic that undergirded it. To these Americans, just leaving the Freedmen to fend for
themselves would create a situation in which the Freedmen and Southern whites would
attempt to murder each other, as shown in this famous cartoon from Harper’s Weekly,
where an agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau is standing between a mob of white
Southerners and a mob of freedmen.15 Northerners had to keep the peace in the South,
and the only way to ensure that peace was to reform the South.
13
Capt. Charles C. Souleto Maj. Gen'l. O. O. Howard, 12June 1865,enclosinganaddress “To the FreedPeopleof Orangeburg
District dated June 1865,” RecordGroup 105,National Archives.
14
Wendell Phillips, “Editorial.” The Antislavery Standard (Boston, MA), May20, 1865.
15
AlfredWaud, “TheFreedmen’s Bureau,” Harper’s Weekly (NewYork,NY),July 25, 1868.

49
These Northerners were aware of the unique challenges that their own ideology
forced on them. If slavery was barbarism, and free labor civilization, then that means the
South would be transformed into a civilized region once slavery was abandoned;
everyone would get what he or she needed, and peace would reign.16 However, if slavery
was abolished and civilization never came, then that would undermine the legitimacy of
Northern guided Reconstruction. Further, if the North failed to transform the South, then
that meant that free labor’s validity itself would be questioned. The Freedmen’s Bureau
was essential to combat that narrative.
16
Greeley, “Free Laborversus Slave Labor,” February26,1856.
AlfredWaud, “The Freedmen’s Bureau,” Harper’s Weekly, July 25, 1868. This cartoonreflects the opinionthat many
Northerners hadabout the situation in the South duringReconstruction.Figure 1.

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