Memminger showed that, without legislation to enforce contracts and to secure eviction of those who refused to work, the white planter in the South was wholly at the mercy of the Negro.

The plantations were scattered, the laborers' houses were already occupied, and there was no labor market to which a planter could go if the laborers deserted his fields.
What would the Negro become if these leaders of reconstruction were to have their way?
Something better than a serf, something less than a citizen--a second degree citizen, perhaps, with legal rights about equal to those of white women and children.

Governor Marvin hoped to make of the race a good agricultural peasantry; his successor was anxious that the blacks should be preferred to European immigrants; others agreed with Memminger that after training and education he might be advanced to full citizenship.
These opinions are representative of those held by the men who, Memminger excepted, were placed in charge of affairs by President Johnson and who were not especially in sympathy with the Negroes or with the planters but rather with the average white.

All believed that emancipation was a mistake, but all agreed that "it is not the Negro's fault" and gave no evidence of a disposition to perpetuate slavery under another name.
The legislation finally framed showed in its discriminatory features the combined influence of the old laws for free Negroes, the vagrancy laws of North and South for whites, the customs of slavery times, the British West Indies legislation for ex-slaves, and the regulations of the United States War and Treasury Departments and of the Freedmen's Bureau--all modified and elaborated by the Southern whites.

In only two states, Mississippi and South Carolina, did the legislation bulk large in quantity; in other states discriminating laws were few; in still other states none were passed except those defining race and prohibiting intermarriage.
In all of the state laws there were certain common characteristics, among which were the following: the descendant of a Negro was to be classed as a Negro through the third generation,* even though one parent in each generation was white; intermarriage of the races was prohibited; existing slave marriages were declared valid and for the future marriage was generally made easier for the blacks than for the whites.