Editing Confederate States of America (section)

===Slaves===
Across the South, widespread rumors predicted the slaves were planning insurrection, causing panic. [[Slave patrol|Patrols]] were stepped up. The slaves did become increasingly independent and resistant to punishment, but historians agree there were no insurrections. Many slaves became spies for the North, and large numbers ran away to federal lines.<ref>{{cite book |first=Bell Irvin |last=Wiley |title=Southern Negroes, 1861–1865 |year=1938 |pages=21, 66–69 }}</ref>

According to the [[1860 United States census]], about 31% of free households in the eleven states that would join the Confederacy owned slaves. The 11 states that seceded had the highest percentage of slaves as a proportion of their population, representing 39% of their total population. The proportions ranged from a majority in South Carolina (57.2%) and Mississippi (55.2%) to about a quarter in Tennessee (24.8%).

Lincoln's [[Emancipation Proclamation]] on January 1, 1863, legally freed three million slaves in designated areas of the Confederacy. The long-term effect was that the Confederacy could not preserve the institution of slavery and lost the use of the core element of its plantation labor force. Over 200,000 freed slaves were hired by the federal army as teamsters, cooks, launderers and laborers, and eventually as soldiers.<ref>{{cite book|author=Martha S. Putney|title=Blacks in the United States Army: Portraits Through History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R3EcLw6H38kC&pg=PA13|year=2003|publisher=McFarland|page=13|isbn=978-0786415939}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.historynet.com/african-americans-in-the-civil-war|title= African Americans In The Civil War|work= History Net: Where History Comes Alive – World & US History Online}}</ref> Plantation owners, realizing that emancipation would destroy their economic system, sometimes moved their slaves as far as possible out of reach of the Union army.<ref>{{cite book |first=Leon F. |last=Litwack |title=Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery |location=New York |publisher=Knopf |year=1979 |pages=30–36, 105–166 |isbn=0-394-50099-7 }}</ref>

Though the [[Forty acres and a mule|concept was promoted within certain circles]] of the Union hierarchy during and immediately following the war, no program of reparations for freed slaves was ever attempted. Unlike other Western countries, such as Britain and France, the U.S. government never paid compensation to Southern slave owners for their "lost property". The only place [[compensated emancipation]] was carried out was the [[District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act|District of Columbia]].<ref>{{cite book |editor-first=Michael |editor-last=Vorenberg |title=The Emancipation Proclamation: A Brief History with Documents |year=2010 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |first=Peter |last=Kolchin |title=Reexamining Southern Emancipation in Comparative Perspective |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_journal-of-southern-history_2015-02_81_1/page/n8 |journal=[[Journal of Southern History]] |volume=81 |issue=1 |year=2015 |pages=7–40 }}</ref>