THE SOUTH

Toward the end of the war, the Confederacy debated whether to enlist slaves as soldiers and, if so, whether slave-soldiers should be granted their freedom. In early 1865 the Confederate Congress passed a law that allowed a limited number of black soldiers to be conscripted. States were left to decide whether slaves who fought would be freed. Confederate President Jefferson Davis, however, allowed only slaves whose owners had volunteered them to serve in the Confederate Army. By the end of the war, a few hundred were enlisted, but very few participated in any significant action.

After the Confederacy was defeated, Southern blacks were confronted with freedom and with the challenge of securing food and shelter. Some continued, out of necessity or choice, to work the land they had worked as slaves.

Occasionally, African Americans worked out agreements with their former masters for wages or other forms of compensation such as food and shelter; however, only in a few cases were their conditions much improved over slavery. Other former slaves migrated to towns and cities, hoping for work, education, or relief distributed by Northern freedpeople's aid societies and Union troops.

Still others traveled more broadly, testing their freedom and seeking relatives from whom they had been separated by war or slavery. In the postwar Reconstruction years, the United States would be forced to confront these and many other issues arising from the legacy of slavery.