While political leaders wrangled in Washington, emancipated slaves acted on their own ideas about freedom (American Voices). Emancipation meant many things: the end of punishment by the lash; the ability to move around; reunion of families; and opportunities to build schools and churches and to publish and read newspapers. Foremost among freedpeople’s demands were voting rights and economic autonomy. Former Confederates opposed these goals. Most southern whites believed the proper place for blacks was as “servants and inferiors,” as a Virginia planter testified to Congress. Mississippi’s governor, elected under President Johnson’s plan, vowed that “ours is and it shall ever be, a government of white men.” Meanwhile, as Reconstruction unfolded, it became clear that on economic questions, southern blacks and northern Republican policymakers did not see eye to eye.