INDUSTRIAL REORGANIZATION IN ALABAMA 477
supplies sufficient to last the people for a few months. A few fortunate individuals had cotton, which was now bringing a fabulous price, and it was the high price received for these few bales not confiscated by the government that saved the Black Belt from suffering as did the other counties.
Neither master nor slave knew exactly how to begin anew, and for a while things simply drifted. Now that the question of slavery was settled, many of the former masters felt a great relief from responsibility, though for their former slaves they felt a pro- found pity. The majority of them had no faith in free negro labor, yet all were willing to give it a trial, and a few of the more strenuous ones said that the energy and strength of the white man that had made the savage negro an efficient laborer could make the free negro work fairly well ; and if the free negro would work, they were willing to admit that the change might be bene- ficial to both races.
During the spring, summer, and fall of 1865 the masters came straggling home, and were met by friendly servants who gave them cordial welcome. Each one at once called his slaves and told them that they were free; that they might stay with him and work for wages, or that they might find other homes. Except in the vicinity of the towns and army posts, the negroes usually chose to stay and work; and in the rural districts affairs were little changed for several months after the surrender. There the surrender hardly caused a ripple on the surface of society. Life and work went on as before. The staid negro coachmen sat upon their boxes on Sunday as of old; the field hands went regularly about their appointed tasks. Labor was cheerful, and the negroes went singing to the fields. "The negro knew no Appomattox. The revolution sat lightly, save in the presence of vacant seats at home and silent graves in the churchyard, in the memorials of destructive raids, in the wonder on the faces of a people once free, now ruled, where ruled at all, by a bureau agent." Here it was that the master-race believed that, after all, freedom might be well. 6 In other sections, where the negro was more exposed to outside influences, the whites were not hopeful. The common
Accounts from old citizens, former planters.
