The Freedmen's Savings Bank

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 175265076X

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-129631

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Fleming, Walter Lynwood http://d-nb.info/gnd/120660560X

Title:: The Freedmen's Savings Bank

Place of publication:: Chapel Hill

Publisher:: Univ. of North Carolina Press

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: x, 170 S.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter I. The negro at the close of the Civil War

Collection:: Economics Books

THE NEGRO AT THE CLOSE OF THE CIVIL WAR J a reasonably short time many individuals might attain economic independence. Wages were high after the war; the cost of living was not great in the South and the Negro’s expenses for the neces- sities of life were not heavy; land was a “drug on the market” and could be purchased for a mere fraction of its former value. If the weaknesses of the Negro could be strengthened, if he could at once take advantage of the opportunities offered, his place in the social organization would be better assured. GRADUAL EMANCIPATION What was the actual condition of the Negro population when “Freedom cried out”? An ex- amination of the conditions surrounding the race during the latter years of the war and in 1865 will lead to a better understanding of the eco- nomic difficulties that it had to solve, and will help to a better appreciation of the possibilities of the Freedmen’s Bank system. It must be re- membered that, although the mass of the Ne- groes was not free until after the surrender of the Confederate armies, large numbers of them had before that time passed through a transition stage toward freedom. In North and South in 1860 there were half a million free Negroes, many of whom had acquired property. The Federal army, as it invaded the South, gave practical freedom to many thousand slaves in the border states and in the theatres of war. During the first year of war these “contrabands,” as they were frequently called, were employed as labor- ers in the Federal camps and on the military

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