[PapaBear3625]

Probably the majority of former slaves stayed with their masters or returned to them after checking out alternatives. Many became sharecroppers. There are historical records that don’t fit today’s narratives.

What else were former slaves going to do? Tending crops was all they knew how to do. Later generations of blacks would head north to work in the factories, but in the years immediately after the Civil War, white people would not tolerate the competition.

Blacks were lynched in NYC in the 1863 Draft Riots

[central_va]

If you hated your former master and his family so much then why would so many freedmen take the last name of their former owner?