THE NEGRO AT THE CLOSE OF THE CIVIL WAR 13 
ployer or manager. The prospects, therefore, 
seemed good for the northern man who had 
some capital. But nearly all ventures by the 
northerners were unsuccessful for numerous 
reasons. The newcomers were ignorant of plant- 
ing methods; their trust in the Negro was some- 
times reckless and caused them to lose heavily; 
frequently they endeavored to exact more effi- 
cient work than the Negro could give and thus 
gained the dislike of the latter; and after a year 
or two politics became such a disturbing factor 
that crops were neglected. The failure of the 
northern planters made northern capital more 
unfriendly, the southern planters gradually went 
to ruin, and the resulting depression injured the 
Negro. 
THE FREEDMEN’S BUREAU 
During the fall and winter of 1865-1866 nearly 
all of the southern legislatures enacted laws later 
known as the “Black Codes” which were de- 
signed to check the roving and thieving propen- 
sities of the Negroes and to hold them to work 
and to a settled abode. This legislation so 
strengthened the already existing northern dis- 
trust of the southern whites that, by means of 
the Freedmen’s Bureau and the military forces, 
the Negroes were removed entirely from local 
legal control, and the southerners were pre- 
vented from directing their economic progress. 
The irritation and disagreement resulting caused 
severe disturbance of economic conditions. 
The Freedmen’s Bureau, created in 1865 by a 
Congress distrustful of the southern master