The close of the war and the advent of emancipation produced a change in the conduct of the negroes, which in time produced a change in the attitude of the white people. The negroes, from the talk which they heard and did not understand, and from their ignorant imaginations, conceived strange ideas of emancipation. They supposed it meant governmental bounty, idleness, and wealth. They abandoned their work, wandered about the country, collected in towns--in short, manifested a general restlessness and demoralization. This caused alarm and apprehension among the white people. There were other causes of friction between the two races. Many negroes, on discovering that they were free, assumed what are known as "airs;" and then as now, among things intolerable to a southern white man a "sassy nigger" held a curious pre-eminence. The airs of the negro and the wrath of the white man were both augmented by officious members of the Freedmen's Bureau. Moreover, because the negroes had gained by the humiliation of the South, they received a share of the venom of defeat. Another element of discord was furnished by a particular part of the white population, the so-called poor whites. These saw in the new _protégés_ of the United States not only a rival laboring class, but a menace to their social position, and hence assumed an attitude of jealousy and hatred. Such were the conditions favorable to social disturbance which followed emancipation. In the latter part of 1865 they had already begun to produce their natural result. Violent encounters between negroes and white men (in which the latter were almost always the aggressors) were noticeably frequent.[29] To this social demoralization was added economic distress and perplexity. The devastation of the war had fallen with especial severity upon Georgia. Worse still, the people seemed unable to repair the damage or to return to productive activity. Planters seemed unable to adapt themselves to the new economic conditions. Slavery, the system which they understood, was gone; they used the new system with little success, all the less because of the restlessness of the negroes.