There was a gag on Family Guy last night about an American slaveowner in the 1860s freeing his slaves, and rather awkwardly asking, “So…we’re cool, right?”
That got me wondering, what were the logistics of the freeing of the slaves? I guess there’s a few questions here, really. When slavery was outlawed, was it a sudden change, or was there a phasing out period? Was there government oversight to ensure slaves were being freed? Did a plantation owner just run out to his field and say “Alright, everybody out,” or did city or state governments set up some sort of program to handle an orderly exit?
Post-Civil-War, Northern troops occupied the Confederate states. All the slaves there had been declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation, and they knew all about that, so they just left (and Federal troops allowed them to go).
It was far from orderly. The former slaves did whatever they wanted to do. Some even stayed (A friend of my daughter was black, and also had an ancestor who fought for the Confederacy*. He was white, but came back and married a former slave after the war). After all, they were now free.
*There were also some Black soldiers on the Confederate side.
Resettlement of slaves after the war was handled by the Freedmen’s Bureau.
As RealityChuck says, wherever Union troops took control after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the slaves generally just ran away. Some who had not been treated badly by their owners might have stayed on to work the land because they had no other way to earn a living.
Slaves in Union slave-holding states were not freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. In most cases they were freed by state law before the end of the war, but the last slaves in Kentucky were not freed until ratification of the 13th Amendment in December 1865. But even there, most slaves who wanted to would have run away by then.
Northern states abolished slavery during or shortly after the American Revolution. In these states, the process could fairly be described as “orderly”, with advance notice and gradual emancipation. However, note that laws for “orderly” emancipation were designed to serve the interests of masters, not slaves; emancipation was gradual to allow masters who had invested in children to recoup their investment.
Southern and border states, of course, didn’t abolish slavery until after the start of the Civil War, and “orderly” is one of the last words one would use to describe the process. Slaves achieved freedom in any number of ways:
-
Some fled to Union army camps as soon as Northern armies drew near to their home.
-
Some remained in place until the Army actually arrived, and then were retained as paid but effectively indentured servants by (often crooked) operators to whom the Union leased seized and abandoned plantations.
-
Some were deliberately turned out by destitute masters who could no longer afford to feed them, and left to make do as best they could–finding their way to a refugee camp if they were “lucky”.
-
Some remained in place until the end of the war, and then signed contracts and continued to work for their former masters.
Once slavery was abolished de jure in a given location (1/1/1863 in most of the South, as late as 1865 in Kentucky and Delaware), yes, the army would prevent its continuation. It wasn’t that hard–once you can’t buy or sell slaves, and have no way to recapture fugitives, the institution tends to dissolve.
However, planter attempts to restore “neo-slavery” via draconian Black Codes formed the backdrop to the subsequent Reconstruction conflict.
If you’re interested in stories about the experience from those who lived it, I recommend Been In the Storm So Long by Leon Litvack.