In Mississippi, Assistant Commissioner Samuel Thomas considered a policy of leasing land to freedmen but abandoned it because it would “require a hero to execute it, and military force to protect the Freedmen during the term of the lease.” He warned that without adequate protection, the Emancipation Proclamation itself would be a dead letter in Mississippi. To leave the freedmen to the care of the state of Mississippi “with all their prejudices and independent of national control” would be to relegate the freedpeople to virtual slavery.
