AMH2010: United States History to 1877
Professor McKeown
October 1, 2012
Book Review: The Black Codes of the South
Although this book is titled, “The Black Codes of the South,” the writer begins his story discussing slavery, then leads up to emancipation, where four million slaves were freed. The freedom of slaves brought about the enactment of the Black Codes in the southern states. Interestingly, the writer includes newspaper sources from the South, as well as the North, excerpts from various plantation owners ‘diaries, notices and laws. The Black Codes came to fruition because the Southerners needed them as laborers , and because the free Negros were not anxious to sign contracts, the South labeled them as idle and vagrants and came up with special laws regarding their liberties. An interesting, conflicting article was written by The Houston Telegraph, in which it wrote that the slaves were not working and had deserted landowners. However, several paragraphs later, the article went on to say that the trains were so loaded with cotton that they could not keep up (Wilson 54). This book covered many viewpoints, observations, opinions and happenings in the South during 1865-1866 with detailed accounts from various sources.
Wilson, Theodore B. The Black Codes of the South. Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1965. Print.
Book Review: Slavery and the Making of America
This book covers slavery from the African roots in Colonial America to the freedom of slaves. At the end of slavery, the author pointed out an interesting fact that has been mentioned in other material only as a rumor. The rumor/fact is that at the end of the Civil War, there was federal control over confiscated Confederate land. For reasons unknown (I suspect political), Congress was unsuccessful in passing legislation which would have granted this land, which consisted of thousands of acres, to former slaves. If this had been passed, former slaves would not have been dependent on