March 2, 1867

Congress passed several Reconstruction Acts. Congress overrode a presidential veto of an act that divided the South into military districts and placed the former Confederate states under martial law pending their adoption of constitutions guaranteeing civil liberties to former slaves. Congress also passed an act giving African American men in the South the right to vote three years before ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. Finally, it passed the Tenure of Office Act, which barred the president from removing officeholders without Senate approval. In August 1867, Johnson tested the Tenure of Office Act by removing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, which prompted Republicans in Congress to impeach the President.

From the 1860 Slave census, David C. Barrow, Sr. was reported to own eighty slaves; of which four of them were above 70 years old and six were fugitives from the state (runaways). They lived in twenty slave cabins on his plantation. He owned $95,670 in real estate and $240,000 in personal property. By the 1870 census, he owned $100,000 in real estate but only had $20,000 in personal property. The significant drop in wealth shows us in real terms how much slaves were intrinsically worth. Barrow Sr’s household contained 19 domestic servants; of which twelve were mulattos and 7 were black. Their surnames are Tucker, Payne, Smith, Morton, and Pope. On the 1880 census, I was able to locate a few of the names listed in the 1881 map of Barrow Plantation. (i.e. Tom Thomas, Ben Thomas, Reuben Barrow, Isaac,  Tom Wright, Lem Douglas, and several Popes, but none with first names that matched the map)