In 1865 the slaves were finally "freed." In general, for most enslaved Afro-Americans, this meant April 1865, after Appomattox, but June 19, 1865 in Texas and by December 1865 in the Border States.
The slaves were set free with only the clothes on their back. Just as Congress did not give the slavemasters compensation for the loss of their slave "property," so too no one gave the former slaves (the Freedmen) back wages for their 225 years of "free" labor (1640-1865). The former slaves received no compensation, restitution or reparations for their centuries of unpaid toil. The former Confederate states, ruined and devastated by the war, were bankrupt, and the former Confederates were bankrupt.
Many Northerners felt that the freedmen could find jobs like everybody else. But while the North had a strong industrial sector and usually had plenty of jobs for job seekers, the South was overwhelmingly agricultural. There was almost NO industrial sector. There were few jobs. In an agricultural society, freedom without land is really just the freedom to starve. Without land a person has no way to earn a living and support himself or his family--except to seek employment as a farm laborer, back on the plantation.
In July 1862 the Radical Republicans had passed the Confiscation Act. The original bill would have confiscated the estates of Confederate rebels fighting against the Union, and set free the slaves of Confederate rebels fighting against the Union. Lincoln felt that the bill was too radical, too revolutionary, and threatened to veto it. In order to avoid a presidential veto, the Congress watered down the bill. They agreed that if land were confiscated from "rebels," it would only be for the lifetime of the accused rebel. The confiscation would not affect the "title" to the land, and the land would revert back to the family or heirs when the rebel died.
This ripped the guts out of the Act. What use was land if one had to give it back? But Lincoln felt that it was wrong to punish the children and family of rebels for the crime of their Confederate fathers. The children, in his view, were innocent of the crime of rebellion or treason or engaging in armed insurrection.
Therefore the Confederate rebels did not suffer, extensively, the confiscation of their land. And the former slaves did not receive the land. And any land that they did receive would only be for the lifetime of the Confederate and then have to be given back or purchased.
The Congress did not impose a fine on the Confederate rebels for their "treason." And the former slaves received no restitution for the injustice done to them. Thus Reconstruction was doomed before it even began. Without land or money or a severance package the former slaves were left in a state of economic dependence and subordination.Though free in name, they would remain where they always had been-at the bottom, and powerless, and dependent. This "freedom" became a hollow mockery, a sham. Decades later Malcolm X would say that Lincoln had tricked the slaves into believing that they were free. But they were just no longer called slaves. They were still economically subordinate. And sharecropper would become a new name for slaves. Legally they were free. Economically they were still slaves. And legally they would be segregated until 1964. Afro-Americans do not celebrate Emancipation from slavery. They do not celebrate the 13th Amendment…because for Afro-Americans these things did not bring freedom. Freedom is more than the mere absence of legal slavery. The 13th Amendment just changed the name of slavery. When one considers that segregation that was required by law did not end in the South until 1964, it is almost as if slavery did not end until 1964. So Afro-Americans celebrate Martin Luther King Day, not the next to useless 13th Amendment and the empty freedom that the nation gave in 1865. King's crusade brought an end to segregation, which was a vestige of slavery that persisted right down to 1964. Subjectively, for some Afro-Americans, it feels as if we are just one generation removed from slavery.
Justice would suggest that the great slaveholders should have been fined as punishment for treason, and some of their land confiscated by the Federal Government if they could not pay the fine; and then that land could have been given to the former slaves as compensation for the injustices committed against them.
After the American Revolution, Americans confiscated the property of "Tories." These were people who fought on the side of the British in the War of Independence. Some of the Indian tribes (nations) in the Indian Territory [current Oklahoma], such as the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek, and some Cherokees, fought on the side of the Confederacy. As punishment, the Federal Government confiscated 2 million acres of their land, and in 1889 threw it open for homesteading (land run) [see Paul Boyer, et al, The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, Volume II, Third Edition, p. 561-62]. But the territories are under the jurisdiction of Congress, and do not have the same rights and protections as citizens of a state. Therefore Congress can do many things with territories that it cannot do with states.
During the Civil War the Federal Government also separated the western counties of Virginia (which had voted against secession) from Virginia, to create the new state of West Virginia. In retrospect, it might have been helpful to have separated the black majority counties of some states into new states.
Congress failed miserably in making restitution to the slaves for the crime against humanity that had been committed against them. And now, generations later, the people who committed the crime are all dead, and the actual victims of the crime are all dead, and some people say that it is too late to do anything about the omission. This is part of the sense of historic grievance that Afro-Americans bear. It is a matter of unfinished business that refuses to "go away." It is like a ghost from the past that still is not at rest, and so it continues to haunt our public discourse to this day in the form of the debate over "reparations." It reflects a wound that still has not healed. Our challenge as students of history is to understand the wound (the injury), and the memory of it, and why it still has not healed almost 140 years after Appomattox.