Karen Cook Bell interrogates how Black women in Louisiana and Georgia used Freedmen’s Bureau courts and their knowledge of the landscape to make their own freedom. In both regions, low wages and legal battles placed formerly enslaved women at a disadvantage; however, their labor aided their families and communities. Through the “contract labor system” in Louisiana and access to abandoned lands in Georgia, these women were able to improve their conditions in the short term. While some freedpeople derived marginal economic benefits from wage labor in the immediate aftermath of the war, in Louisiana these newly emancipated women were persistent in their demands for full and fair compensation from the Bureau of Free Labor, which adjudicated a significant number of cases in their favor.

The chapter provides a transnational perspective on how the apprenticeship’s end caused new challenges for the free labor experiment, as British West Indian colonial economies faltered in the 1840s and former slaves asserted their rights as working people. In their pursuit of expanded liberty, black West Indians forced American antislavery to examine the limitations of a strict free labor ideology, and to envision the experiment’s success on other terms, as the issue of slavery moved to the center of national politics.

This chapter examines how free labor was adapted as a compelling argument in the antislavery Anglo-Atlantic. For English antislavery these strategies developed out of a need to show emancipation’s imperial commercial advantages, as parliamentary debates questioned whether former slaves would work upon emancipation. In the United States, free labor antislavery emerged from a burgeoning ideology that imbued labor with moral characteristics. Through the industriousness of black West Indians, abolitionists on either side of the Atlantic hoped to prove the moral rightness of emancipation, the capability of former slaves within democratic capitalism, and the benefits of free labor.

Evolution of labor and reconstitution of plantation system on sugar and cotton plantations of lower Mississippi valley during 1863. Sugar and cotton reflect different regimens but also share characteristics in common: conflict between former slaveholders and former slaves over new modes of work; Federal officials fear dependency of freed people on government support; plantation-leasing system to northern transplants intended to bring free-labor notions to South. Planters determined to reestablish labor control; freed people determined to achieve meaningful economic independence. Wartime military free labor in sugar and cotton regions encounters many difficulties, and all parties express dissatisfaction with system. By end of year, calls for reformed system for 1864. Military free labor essential step in moving from emancipating slaves to abolishing slavery, but also reveals shortcomings of military emancipation.

Wartime free labor under military auspices evolves in the Union-occupied lower Mississippi valley during the second half of 1864. Legislatures of Arkansas and Louisiana fail to address new labor arrangements, and plantation affairs remain under Federal military authority. Sugar planters, confronting the abolition of slavery in Louisiana, clamor for labor and racial control in planning for the 1865, whereas freedpeople and their advocates call for economic independence and criticize the Unionist government’s failure to implement racial equality. The cotton region witnesses continuing conflict over the new labor arrangements, with freedpeople pushing for alternatives to wage labor and access to land. The Davis Bend community underscores black aspirations for economic independence, while reports of the reenslavement of freedpeople along the Mississippi River illustrate the desperation of former slaveholders to preserve slavery.

The evolution of wartime free labor and the reorganizing of the plantation regimen in the sugar and cotton regions of the lower Mississippi valley during the first half of 1864. Federal military labor policy expands upon the rights of the freedpeople, in response to earlier criticism, but it still includes elements of involuntary labor. Sugar planters maintain their insistence that slavery still exists, but they accommodate themselves to new labor arrangements in order to operate their plantations. The cotton plantations also experience conflict between former slaveholders and freedpeople over labor, as well as jurisdictional disputes between Federal military and Treasury Department officials over administering the plantation-leasing system. Confederate raids, along with other difficulties, continue to disrupt development of the new labor system, and reenslavement remains a danger.

During second half of 1862, Unionists – including slaveholders – in the occupied lower Mississippi valley organize politically, with assistance from Federal military authorities. By July, Lincoln has already decided to issue an Emancipation Proclamation, and his frustration with the failure of Unionists in Louisiana to act influences his thinking. Lincoln issues preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September, spelling out requirements for Confederate areas not to be declared in rebellion. Federal military forces establish contraband camps for fugitive slaves, but also express fears of former slaves becoming dependent of government support; they also implement systems of wartime free labor on plantations under military oversight.

Despite their Republican leanings, many Scandinavian immigrants expressed scepticism toward the Emancipation Proclamation and black citizenship, and opposed black laborers potentially migrating north.