But slavery had not made them thrifty, self-reliant, or educated.

Frederick Douglass said of the Negro at the end of his servitude: "He had none of the conditions of self-preservation or self-protection.

He was free from the individual master, but he had nothing but the dusty road under his feet.
He was free from the old quarter that once gave him shelter, but a slave to the rains of summer and to the frosts of winter.

He was turned loose, naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky." To prove that he was free the Negro thought he must leave his old master, change his name, quit work for a time, perhaps get a new wife, and hang around the Federal soldiers in camp or garrison, or go to the towns where the Freedmen's Bureau was in process of organization.

To the Negroes who remained at home--and, curiously enough, for a time at least many did so--the news of freedom was made known somewhat ceremonially by the master or his representative.