We control ’em; and we don’t mean to take ’em to anybody’s plantation without being paid for it.” And, in truth, quite a number of officers were bargaining all the time with the negro-seeking planters for their valuable influence.
Reid highlights the bargaining practices of officers who were leveraging their influence over freedmen for labor contracts.
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But proofs were not wanting of the spirit in which, to the very last, the conflict against the Government had been waged.
Here was the opportunity for a statesman to grasp.
Fully believing the debts of their Rebel Government legal and just, they were prepared to repudiate them at a hint from Washington.
These Southern Rebels have their fate in their own keeping, and they are nursing their wrath to keep it warm.