ascribed to the enrolment of negroes as soldiers and to the capture of slaves by the Federal armies.[715] For several years after the war young negro children were scarce in certain districts. They had died by hundreds and thousands through neglect.[716] Relations between Whites and Blacks For a year or two the relations between the blacks and whites were, on the whole, friendly, in spite of the constant effort of individual northerners and negro soldiers to foment trouble between the races. As a result of the work of outsiders, there was a growing tendency to insolent conduct on the part of the younger negro men, who were convinced that civil behavior and freedom were incompatible. On the part of some there was a disposition not to submit to the direction of the white men in their work, and the negro's advisers warned him against the efforts of the white man to enslave him. Consequently he refused to make contracts that called for any responsibility on his part, and if he made a contract the Bureau must ratify it, and, as he had no knowledge of the obligation of contracts, he was likely to break it. In an address of the white ministers of Selma to the negroes, they said that papers had been circulated among the negroes telling them that they were hated and detested by the whites, and that such papers caused bad feeling, which was unfortunate, as the races must live together, and the better the feeling, the better it would be for both. At first, the address added, there was some bad feeling when certain negroes, in order to test their freedom, became impudent and insulting, but on the part of the white man this feeling was soon changed. Later the negroes were poisoned against their former masters by listening to lying whites, and then they refused to work. The ministers warned the negroes against their continual idleness and their immoral lives, and told them that those of them who pretended to work were not making one bushel of corn where they might make ten, and that the whites wanted workers. The self-respecting negroes were asked to use their influence for the bettering of the worthless members of their race.[717]