Time in Need

At first, white southerners insisted that only legally sanctioned efforts to enforce racial subordination could preserve order and compel blacks to remain productive members of the work force
Planters sought, in particular, to have former slaves sign written contracts that tied them to the land for a full year
Such contracts underscored the transformation in the social relations of the South
Mary Jones, a mistress on a Georgia plantation who took great pride in her treatment of slaves before the war, recounted that "I had considered (the slaves) friends and treated them as such", but now "they were only laborers under contract, and only the law would rule between us, and I would require every one of them to come up to the mark in their duty on the plantation."

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