reconstruction period he was made by the legislation of some states and by
Congress the legal equal of the white even in certain social matters.

The race problem which confronted the American people had no parallel in the
past. British and Spanish-American emancipation of slaves had affected only
small numbers or small regions, in which one race greatly outnumbered the
other. The results of these earlier emancipations of the Negroes and the
difficulties of European states in dealing with subject white populations were
not such as to afford helpful example to American statesmen. But since it was
the actual situation in the Southern States rather than the experience of
other countries which shaped the policies adopted during reconstruction, it is
important to examine with some care the conditions in which the Negroes in the
South found themselves at the close of the war.

The Negroes were not all helpless and without experience "when freedom cried
out."* In the Border States and in the North there were, in 1861, half a
million free Negroes accustomed to looking out for themselves. Nearly 200,000
Negro men were enlisted in the United States army between 1862 and 1865, and
many thousands of slaves had followed raiding Federal forces to freedom or had
escaped through the Confederate lines. State emancipation in Missouri,
Maryland, West Virginia, and Tennessee, and the practical application of the
Emancipation Proclamation where the Union armies were in control ended slavery
for many thousands more. Wherever the armies marched, slavery ended. This was
true even in Kentucky, where the institution was not legally abolished until
the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. Altogether more than a million
Negroes were free and to some extent habituated to freedom before May 1865.

*A Negro phrase much used in referring to emancipation.