CHAPTER V.
NUNC PRO TUNC.
The first step in the progress from the prison-house of bondage
to the citadel of liberty was a strange one. The war was over. The
struggle for autonomy and the inviolability of slavery, on the part
of the South, was ended, and fate had decided against them. With
this arbitrament of war fell also the institution which had been
its cause. Slavery was abolished--by proclamation, by national
enactment, by constitutional amendment--ay, by the sterner logic
which forbade a nation to place shackles again upon hands which
had been raised in her defence, which had fought for her life and
at her request. So the slave was a slave no more. No other man
could claim his service or restrain his volition. He might go or
come, work or play, so far as his late master was concerned.
But that was all. He could not contract, testify, marry or give
in marriage. He had neither property, knowledge, right, or power.
The whole four millions did not possess that number of dollars
or of dollars' worth. Whatever they had acquired in slavery was
the master's, unless he had expressly made himself a trustee for
their benefit. Regarded from the legal standpoint it was, indeed,
a strange position in which they were. A race despised, degraded,
penniless, ignorant, houseless, homeless, fatherless, childless,
nameless. Husband or wife there was not one in four millions.
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