Most people assume that Emancipation meant that enslaved people could go on their way and live life free from the shackles which bound them, much like any propertied white person of the day. However, while Emancipation changed their de jure legal status, most formerly enslaved people still found themselves working all day on the plantations. Northern commanders in charge of civil government saw freedmen through the lens of vagrancy laws. They issued provisional rules on vagrancy that covered all freedmen. In Louisiana, the provisional rules of military commanders soon changed into acts of the legislature, known collectively as the Black Codes.
