secure their future. By the summer, Andrew Johnson—a political and social conservative, opposed to any federal assistance to freed people—had ordered that all confiscated land be returned to Confederates who swore loyalty to the United States and promised to respect the Constitution. Outraged families on South Carolina’s Edisto Island registered their protest with the Freedmen’s Bureau. This “is not the condition of freemen,” the petitioners wrote of the decision to allow Confederates to return to the island. They knew the former enslavers were sure to evict them if they refused to submit to
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