As I understand history, the original plan was to relocate all Black people in America to Liberia, Africa after the Civil War. However, U.S. plantation owners and some manufacturers opposed the plan because they wanted cheap labor (sounds familiar today doesn't it). Black workers were paid for work after the war, but how and what they were paid was up to the employer. Like the Virginia coal miners for example.
In fact, there is a historical thesis that Booth assassinated Lincoln not because of the war, but specifically because he would have rid the South and America of the Black workforce on which they had become dependent.
