Book contents
- Freedom’s Crescent
- Cambridge Studies on the American South
- Freedom’s Crescent
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Additional material
- Introduction
- Prologue Life – and Labor – on the Mississippi
- Part I From War for Union to Military Emancipation, 1860–1862
- Part II From Military Emancipation to State Abolition, 1863
- Part III Abolition: State and Federal, 1864
- 10 “Slavery Is Incompatible with a Republican Form of Government”
- 11 Of Foul Combinations and the Common Object
- 12 “The Jewel of Liberty”
- 13 “The Virus of Slavery Is As Virulent As It Ever Was”
- 14 “No Longer Slaves but Freedmen”
- 15 “So Long As a Spark of Vitality Remains in the Institution of Slavery”
- 16 “Freedom, Full, Broad and Unconditional”
- 17 “To Resolve Never Again to Be Reduced to Slavery”
- Part IV The Destruction of Slavery, 1865
- Epilogue Memphis and New Orleans: May 1–3 and July 30, 1866
- Bibliography
- Index
13 - “The Virus of Slavery Is As Virulent As It Ever Was”
from Part III - Abolition: State and Federal, 1864
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 January 2023
- Freedom’s Crescent
- Cambridge Studies on the American South
- Freedom’s Crescent
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Additional material
- Introduction
- Prologue Life – and Labor – on the Mississippi
- Part I From War for Union to Military Emancipation, 1860–1862
- Part II From Military Emancipation to State Abolition, 1863
- Part III Abolition: State and Federal, 1864
- 10 “Slavery Is Incompatible with a Republican Form of Government”
- 11 Of Foul Combinations and the Common Object
- 12 “The Jewel of Liberty”
- 13 “The Virus of Slavery Is As Virulent As It Ever Was”
- 14 “No Longer Slaves but Freedmen”
- 15 “So Long As a Spark of Vitality Remains in the Institution of Slavery”
- 16 “Freedom, Full, Broad and Unconditional”
- 17 “To Resolve Never Again to Be Reduced to Slavery”
- Part IV The Destruction of Slavery, 1865
- Epilogue Memphis and New Orleans: May 1–3 and July 30, 1866
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The evolution of wartime free labor and the reorganizing of the plantation regimen in the sugar and cotton regions of the lower Mississippi valley during the first half of 1864. Federal military labor policy expands upon the rights of the freedpeople, in response to earlier criticism, but it still includes elements of involuntary labor. Sugar planters maintain their insistence that slavery still exists, but they accommodate themselves to new labor arrangements in order to operate their plantations. The cotton plantations also experience conflict between former slaveholders and freedpeople over labor, as well as jurisdictional disputes between Federal military and Treasury Department officials over administering the plantation-leasing system. Confederate raids, along with other difficulties, continue to disrupt development of the new labor system, and reenslavement remains a danger.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Freedom's CrescentThe Civil War and the Destruction of Slavery in the Lower Mississippi Valley, pp. 268 - 281Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023