While Southerners were mourning the loss of their financially lucrative labor source, more than four million former slaves were trying to find their way as freedmen. The majority of the emancipated blacks were illiterate, with limited skills and financial resources.
The one factor that connected most former slaves was a thirst for religion. Many masters had allowed their slaves to worship beside them, but with the Emancipation Proclamation former slaves began developing their own churches. Between 1850 and 1870, the black Baptist Church had grown by 350,000 members, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church quadrupled its membership. Many blacks were driven toward literacy largely out of their desire to read the Bible.
In response to the desire for literacy, black schools were established—some with black teachers and others with white teachers, primarily female missionaries from the American Missionary Association. It was not uncommon to see grandmothers attend school alongside their grandchildren. However, there were not enough teachers to meet the demands, and eventually the federal government stepped in to help.
At President Lincoln’s encouragement, along with pressure from influential Northern abolitionists, Congress developed the Freedmen’s Bureau on March 8, 1865. This early social welfare program was dedicated to educating, training, and providing financial and moral support for former slaves. One strong supporter of the Bureau was Union general Oliver O. Howard, the eventual founder and president of Howard University in Washington, D.C.
With Howard’s support, over 200,000 blacks learned to read through the programs offered by the Freedmen’s Bureau. Unfortunately, the system became corrupt and it was never able to achieve its potential. The catch-phrase of the day was “40 acres and a mule,” as that was what was promised to the emancipated slaves, with the plan to settle them on land confiscated from the Confederates. However, corrupt officials usually kept the land for themselves and manipulated many former slaves into signing labor contracts that essentially placed them back in a slave-like environment.
White Southerners campaigned against the Freedmen’s Bureau. Many felt that although they had lost the right to own slaves, they still possessed racial superiority. The Freedmen’s Bureau threatened that presumption. When President Lincoln was assassinated in April of 1865, and Andrew Johnson stepped into office, the Freedman’s Bureau lost an ally in the White House. Johnson, a Southerner, had been raised with the same racial biases as those who opposed the Freedmen’s Bureau, and he allowed the program to expire in 1872.
Despite its flaws, the Freedmen’s Bureau had helped a majority of former slaves achieve some degree of success. Freed slaves began to develop a political unity and refused to be discouraged. Their primary political vehicle was the northern-based Union League, which educated freedmen on civil responsibility and campaigned for Republican leaders who supported the freedmen’s cause.
Blacks themselves also began to assume political roles. Sixteen black men served in the Senate and the House of Representatives between 1868 and 1876, and numerous others took on roles in state and local government. This was much to the dismay of their former masters, who scorned the white allies of these black political leaders.
The whites who allied themselves with blacks became known as either “scalawags” or “carpetbaggers.” Scalawags were Southerners who opposed secession and were accused of harming the South by helping the blacks and stealing from their state treasuries. Carpetbaggers were Northerners who were accused of putting all their worldly belongings into a carpetbag suitcase and coming to the south at war’s end to gain personal profit and power. The name-calling on occasion erupted into violence, suggesting that Southerners believed that they were superior not only to blacks, but to black-friendly whites, as well. This disharmony was typical of the early stages of Reconstruction.