Here in a nutshell was the problem that would preoccupy the South for generations after the war. How “temporary” would this suggested system of apprenticeship turn out to be? What kind of education would freed slaves receive? How long would their status as a “laboring, landless, and homeless class” persist? These were questions that could not be fully resolved until after the war—if then. But they had already emerged in nascent form in the army’s administration of contraband affairs in the occupied South.
