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opinion was that with free negro labor cotton could not be culti- vated with success. The northerner thought that it was a crop made by forced labor, and that no freeman would willingly per- form such labor; the southerner believed that the negro would neglect the crop too much when not under strict supervision. Yet later years have shown that free white labor is most successful in the cultivation of cotton because of the care now expended on farms in the white counties; while cotton is the only crop that the free negro has cultivated with any degree of success, because some kind of a crop can be made on the fertile soils of the Black Belt by the most careless cultivation.
At first no one knew just how to work the free negro. Innumerable plans were formed, and many were tried. The old patriarchal relations were preserved as far as possible. Truman, 7 who made a long stay in Alabama, reported that in most cases there was a genuine attachment between masters and negroes; that the masters were the best friends the negroes had ; and that, though they regarded the blacks with much commiseration, they were inclined to encourage them to collect around the big house on the old slavery terms, giving food, clothes, quarters, medical attendance, and some pay. 8 At that time no one could understand the freedom of the negro. 9 As one old master expressed it, he saw no " free negroes" 10 until the fall of 1865, when the bureau began to influence the blacks. But with the extension of the bureau and the spread of army posts, the negroes, who for a while had been taking freedom on faith, now determined to enjoy the reality. Crops that had been planted in the spring were neg- lected in the summer and fall, while the darky moved away from
1 The agent of President Johnson.
- Report to the President, April 9, 1866.
Colonel Saunders, a noted slaveholder in one of the white counties in north Alabama, established a patriarchal protectorate over his former slaves. He built a church for them, and organized a monthly court, presided over by himself, in which the old negro men tried delinquents. It is said that the findings of this court were often ludicrous in the extreme, but order was preserved and for a long while there was no resort to the bureau. (See Saunders, Early Settlers, p. 31.) Many similar protectorates were established in the remote districts, but the policy of the bureau was to break them up.
- A term of contempt.
