land was cheap. Thousands seemed thirsty for an education and crowded the
schools which were available. It was too much, however, to expect the Negro to
take immediate advantage of his opportunities. What he wanted was a long
holiday, a gun and a dog, and plenty of hunting and fishing. He must have
Saturday at least for a trip to town or to a picnic or a circus; he did not
wish to be a servant. When he had any money, swindlers reaped a harvest. They
sold him worthless finery, cheap guns, preparations to bleach the skin or
straighten the hair, and striped pegs which, when set up on the master's
plantation, would entitle the purchaser to "40 acres and a mule."

The attitude of the Negroes' employers not infrequently complicated the
situation which they sought to better. The old masters were, as a rule,
skeptical of the value of free Negro labor. Carl Schurz thought this attitude
boded ill for the future: "A belief, conviction, or prejudice, or whatever you
may call it," he said, "so widely spread and apparently deeply rooted as this,
that the Negro will not work without physical compulsion, is certainly
calculated to have a very serious influence upon the conduct of the people
entertaining it. It naturally produced a desire to preserve slavery in its
original form as much and as long as possible . . . or to introduce into the
new system that element of physical compulsion which would make the Negro
work." The Negro wished to be free to leave his job when he pleased, but, as
Benjamin C. Truman stated in his report to President Johnson, a "result of the
settled belief in the Negro's inferiority, and in the necessity that he should
not be left to himself without a guardian, is that in some sections he is
discouraged from leaving his old master. I have known of planters who
considered it an offence against neighborhood courtesy for another to hire
their old hands, and in two instances that were reported the disputants came
to blows over the breach of etiquette." The new Freedmen's Bureau insisted
upon written contracts, except for day laborers, and this undoubtedly kept
many Negroes from working regularly, for they were suspicious of contracts.