to secure eviction of those who refused to work, the white planter in the
South was wholly at the mercy of the Negro. The plantations were scattered,
the laborers' houses were already occupied, and there was no labor market to
which a planter could go if the laborers deserted his fields.

What would the Negro become if these leaders of reconstruction were to have
their way? Something better than a serf, something less than a citizen--a
second degree citizen, perhaps, with legal rights about equal to those of
white women and children. Governor Marvin hoped to make of the race a good
agricultural peasantry; his successor was anxious that the blacks should be
preferred to European immigrants; others agreed with Memminger that after
training and education he might be advanced to full citizenship.

These opinions are representative of those held by the men who, Memminger
excepted, were placed in charge of affairs by President Johnson and who were
not especially in sympathy with the Negroes or with the planters but rather
with the average white. All believed that emancipation was a mistake, but all
agreed that "it is not the Negro's fault" and gave no evidence of a
disposition to perpetuate slavery under another name.

The legislation finally framed showed in its discriminatory features the
combined influence of the old laws for free Negroes, the vagrancy laws of
North and South for whites, the customs of slavery times, the British West
Indies legislation for ex-slaves, and the regulations of the United States War
and Treasury Departments and of the Freedmen's Bureau--all modified and
elaborated by the Southern whites. In only two states, Mississippi and South
Carolina, did the legislation bulk large in quantity; in other states
discriminating laws were few; in still other states none were passed except
those defining race and prohibiting intermarriage.