Men like the Shermans believed that their new free labor economy was the best in the world and that it would attract any man who was not utterly blind to its obvious benefits. As evidence, they could offer the 4 million African American freedpeople who had fought to be included in the new economy, the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who arrived each year to participate in it, and even some Sioux, who recognized that the pressure of Republican economic policy on Indian life could not be ignored and who were willing to try to live like white men.
