thousand million dollars had suddenly disappeared.
One thousand five hundred more
millions representing the Confederate war debt,
had largely disappeared. Large amounts of real
estate and other property had been destroyed, industry had been disorganized, 250,000 men had
been killed and many more maimed. With this
went the moral effect of an unsuccessful war with
all its letting down of social standards and quickening of hatred and discouragement—a situation
which would make it difficult under any circumstances to reconstruct a new government and a
new civilization. Moreover any human being of
any color “doomed in his own person and his posterity to live without knowledge and without capacity to make anything his own and to toil that
another may reap the fruits,” is bound on sudden
emancipation to loom like a great dread on the
horizon.
The fear of Negro freedom in the South was increased by its own consciousness of guilt, yet it was reasonable to expect from it something more than mere repression and reaction toward slavery. To some small extent this expectation was fulfilled: the abolition of slavery was recognized and the civil rights of owning property and appearing as a witness in cases in which he was a party were generally granted the Negro; yet with
