For whites in Wilmington, blacks had ceased to be slaves, but they had not ceased to be black. They were still considered unworthy, unequal, and inferior, still subservient to whites by any measure—social, political, or economic. For freed slaves, the defeat of the Confederacy and the end of slavery promised not just citizenship and the right of black men to vote but also the right to work for fair pay, and to live on something approaching an equal, if separate, status with the whites who had so recently enslaved them. They sought to be free citizens, not just free Negroes.
