Smith of Albany
"furnishes" him, and his rent is eight hundred pounds of
cotton. Can't make anything at that. Why didn't he buy land!
Humph! Takes money to buy land. And he turns away. Free!
The most piteous thing amid all the black ruin of war-time,
amid the broken fortunes of the masters, the blighted hopes of
mothers and maidens, and the fall of an empire,--the most
piteous thing amid all this was the black freedman who threw
down his hoe because the world called him free. What did
such a mockery of freedom mean? Not a cent of money, not
an inch of land, not a mouthful of victuals,--not even owner-
ship of the rags on his back. Free! On Saturday, once or
twice a month, the old master, before the war, used to dole
out bacon and meal to his Negroes. And after the first flush
of freedom wore off, and his true helplessness dawned on the
freedman, he came back and picked up his hoe, and old
master still doled out his bacon and meal. The legal form of
service was theoretically far different; in practice, task-work
or "cropping" was substituted for daily toil in gangs; and the
slave gradually became a metayer, or tenant on shares, in
name, but a laborer with indeterminate wages in fact.
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