of the Freedmen's Bureau. The two sections saw the same problem from different
angles, and their proposed solutions were of necessity opposed in principle
and in practice.

The South desired to fit the emancipated Negro race into the new social order
by frankly recognizing his inferiority to the whites. In some things racial
separation was unavoidable. New legislation consequently must be enacted,
because the slave codes were obsolete; because the old laws made for the small
free Negro class did not meet present conditions; and because the emancipated
blacks could not be brought conveniently and at once under laws originally
devised for a white population. The new laws must meet many needs; family
life, morals, and conduct must be regulated; the former slave must be given a
status in court in order that he might be protected in person and property;
the old, the infirm, and the orphans must be cared for; the white race must be
protected from lawless blacks and the blacks from unscrupulous and violent
whites; the Negro must have an opportunity for education; and the roving
blacks must be forced to get homes, settle down, and go to work.

Pending such legislation the affairs of the Negro remained in control of the
unpopular Freedmen's Bureau--a "system of espionage," as Judge Clayton of
Alabama called it, and, according to Governor Humphreys of Mississippi, "a
hideous curse" under which white men were persecuted and pillaged. Judge
Memminger of South Carolina, in a letter to President Johnson, emphasized the
fact that the whites of England and the United States gained civil and
political rights through centuries of slow advancement and that they were far
ahead of the people of European states. Consequently, it would be a mistake to
give the freedmen a status equal to that of the most advanced whites. Rather,
let the United States profit by the experience of the British in their
emancipation policies and arrange a system of apprenticeship for a period of
transition. When the Negro should be fit, let him be advanced to citizenship.