The Shackles in the Shadows of History

"The organization of large plantations anticipated in many ways the assembly line and modern factory production," Davis says. "Only in recent years have we learned that the richest pre-Civil War Americans lived in the Deep South, which also had the country's highest per capita wealth. In 1860, the market value of slaves exceeded that of the nation's railroads and factories combined."

Freedom at war's end left the former slaves adrift, with no homes, no food, no jobs, no means of support, in search of lost mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, children.

And the nation then debated what to do with them. The African American historian W.E.B. Du Bois described it bitterly:

After the Civil War, in which "Negroes fought like the damned," Du Bois wrote in 1960, "then we turned from the abolition of slavery to our muttons: to making money. Some Americans stepped forward with alms and teachers for the black freedmen. Some rushed South to make money with cheap labor and high cotton. But most of the nation tried to forget the Negro. He was free. What more did he want?"

A Freedmen's Bureau was launched in 1865 to help the displaced slaves with food, clothing, the search for work, the search for relatives. Men and women clamored to get their slave marriages legalized, another service the bureau offered.

But there were those who felt the former slaves were getting too much help. Accounts of the debate over the Freedmen's Bureau echo racial debates of today.

Sen. Eli Saulsbury, a Delaware Democrat, complained in 1866 that aid for the freed slaves amounted to white people being asked "to support in idleness a class who are too lazy or too worthless to support themselves," according to congressional records quoted in a 2005 article in the Law and History Review titled "The Sympathetic State," by Michele Landis Dauber.

And yet a 1930s account from former slave Matilda Hatchett tells us firsthand what the suddenness of liberty held in store:

"We was freed and went to a place that was full of people. We had to stay in a church with about about twenty other people and two of the babies died there on account of the exposure. Two of my aunts died too on account of exposure then."

Who would want to remember those bad old days of misery and dying? That's how some people see it. Let it be. Don't look back. Or, in the now famous words earlier this year of Virginia Del. Frank D. Hargrove Sr. (R-Hanover), people "should get over" slavery.

"Some of them want to perpetuate this business of victimism," Hargrove, a descendant of slave owners, said in an interview, about some slave descendants.

But remembering slavery is no different from remembering any other aspect of American history, say others.

"Why do we have statues? Why do we have monuments? In Richmond, why do we have a street that is a monument to Confederate generals? Why do we have Civil War reenactments? Why do we have a Jamestown commemoration?"

That is Del. A. Donald McEachin (D-Richmond), one of the sponsors of the Virginia slavery apology that has sparked a national trend in state legislatures. Maryland also has offered its "profound regret."

The conversation is especially poignant for McEachin, the great-grandson of a slave.

Of slavery, he says, "There's no shame, because I take great pride in the fact that my ancestors were able to overcome slavery," though he adds the obvious: "There's pain because you wouldn't want anyone to have to endure the things that they had to endure."

While it took 100 more years for blacks to win full rights, the moment of freedom's arrival is celebrated even today. African Americans gather all over the country to mark Juneteenth, short for June 19, 1865, the day when the news finally reached the slaves of Texas -- months after the 13th Amendment's passage and the surrender of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Rev. Ronald V. Myers of Belzoni, Miss., founder of the National Juneteenth Christian Leadership Council, says 25 states now have official Juneteenth observances. Surprisingly, Myers has gotten Hargrove on the bandwagon. The state delegate sponsored a Virginia resolution for Juneteenth, to be commemorated on the third Saturday of June. Hargrove says he is not contradicting his earlier views, just acknowledging that commemorating freedom for the slaves is "a positive and productive thing."

It's all about healing, says Myers, and finding common ground for people who might not otherwise agree on racial issues.

And who needs this healing?

"The country," says Myers. "America needs it. All of us need it. Black. White. We all need to be able to deal with the history and legacy of slavery and move forward in a constructive way. . . . We have never really had a real time of healing in America from the legacy of slavery."

Instead, the slaves had to sort it out for themselves. They moved on. They made new American lives. They worked hard so life would be better for their children and their children's children. They passed on the memory of slavery or, as often happened in African American families, they kept quiet.

But not Mary Reynolds:

"I sets and 'members the times in the worl d. I 'me mb ers now clear as yesterday things I forgot for a long time. I 'me mb ers 'bout the days of slavery and I don't 'lieve they ever gwins have slaves no more on this earth. I think Gawd done took that burden offen his black chillun and I'm aimin' to praise him for it to his face in the days of Glory what ain't so far off."