A former Slave's experience of Reconstruction..

My Primary source is a former slave, Henry Adams, speaking to the Senate 15 years later, in 1880, about the unfair treatment the African Americans experienced through Reconstruction and the corrupt share cropping system they experienced.  He says that the white people read a document saying all of the colored people were free, but his owner told him that the white people were angry with the Negros and were “killing them for fun”.  He tells Henry that it would be best for them to stay with their old masters, where they could have protection.  Henry refused to sign a contract, but he says everyone else on his plantation did, except him and a boy named Samuel Jefferson.  He covers how they farmed and received absolutely nothing for their work with cotton, and he says they never got a cent for splitting rails.  He says they got only got enough potatoes, corn, and molasses to eat.  Not only were they screwed out of their earnings, he tells the story of going to the house and asking where the “boss” was.  That the white woman said he should be addressed as Master and said none of them were truly free.  He tells the story of the white woman in church beating his sister with a stick, and when the white man got home, him beating her nearly to death.  He said the contracts said he was not supposed to be allowed to hit anyone of the blacks anymore.  The next day, Henry recalls that him and a group of ten or eleven others decided to leave.  He had a horse and some money, but says a group of white men started shooting at them.  When they caught up with them, they took his horse and took all of the clothes they had, and said they threatened that they would kill any nigger trying to leave their masters.  Henry also says that a man and his wife were not allowed to live together.  Henry says that to his knowledge, between Shreveport and Logansport, over 2,000 colored people were killed trying to leave for freedom after the white people told them they were free in 1865.  His recollection of the events shows the massive failure of the United States government to protected blacks during Reconstruction.  They were still forced to work for next to nothing, they were still beaten and even killed for disobedience, and they were not truly allowed to be free.  We said that many hit the rode, but according to Henry, his group was not even allowed to leave.  They were taken advantage of and still treated like slaves, the owners even said as much.  This is just evidence of the failures of Reconstruction, it truly was the last battle of the Civil War and the Confederates won.  They were allowed to continue to treat black people like slaves and not grant them their unalienable rights.  This shows the ineffectiveness of United States’ policies when it comes to protecting blacks in Reconstruction.