In some things racial separation was unavoidable.

New legislation consequently must be enacted, because the slave codes were obsolete; because the old laws made for the small free Negro class did not meet present conditions; and because the emancipated blacks could not be brought conveniently and at once under laws originally devised for a white population.

The new laws must meet many needs; family life, morals, and conduct must be regulated; the former slave must be given a status in court in order that he might be protected in person and property; the old, the infirm, and the orphans must be cared for; the white race must be protected from lawless blacks and the blacks from unscrupulous and violent whites; the Negro must have an opportunity for education; and the roving blacks must be forced to get homes, settle down, and go to work.
Pending such legislation the affairs of the Negro remained in control of the unpopular Freedmen's Bureau--a "system of espionage," as Judge Clayton of Alabama called it, and, according to Governor Humphreys of Mississippi, "a hideous curse" under which white men were persecuted and pillaged.

Judge Memminger of South Carolina, in a letter to President Johnson, emphasized the fact that the whites of England and the United States gained civil and political rights through centuries of slow advancement and that they were far ahead of the people of European states.

Consequently, it would be a mistake to give the freedmen a status equal to that of the most advanced whites.