The Emancipation Proclamation supposedly crossed over from a
symbolic to a
practical declaration during the
Reconstruction period after the Civil War. Men from the government spread across the devestated
South to report the situation back to the
White House and order the freeing of slaves. They found though, that it was just as worthless a piece of paper after the war as it had been before. A black slave woman in
Texas recounted the coming of '
freedom'.
I heard about freedom in September and they were picking cotton and a white man rode up to master's house on a big, white horse and the houseboy told master a man wanted to see him and he hollered, "Light, stranger." It was a government man and he had the big book and a bunch of papers and said why hadn't master turned the niggers loose. Master said he was trying to get the crop out and he told master to have the slaves in. Uncle Steven blew the cow horn that they used to call to eat and all the niggers came running, because that horn meant, "Come to the big house, quick." The man read the paper telling us we were free, but master made us work several months after that. He said we would get 20 acres of land and a mule, but we didn't get it.
Lots of niggers were killed after freedom, because the slaves in Harrison County were turned loose right at freedom and those in Rusk County weren't. But they heard about it and ran away to freedom in Harrison County and their owners had them bushwacked, then shot down. You could see lots of niggers hanging from trees in Sabine bottom right after freedom, because they cought them swimming across Sabine River and shot them. There sure are going to be lots of souls crying against them in judgement!
The
Civil War recovered the Union, but the moral underpinnings were left to rot. African Americans would not be truly recognized as
human until one hundred years later.
George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1972) vol. 5, Texas Narratives, part 3, p. 78