Besides no longer being someone else's property, freed slaves could learn to read and write (it was against the law in most slave states), vote, own property, have legally recognized marriages, raise their own children without an owner being able to sell them away, travel on their own without a master's permission, be counted fully in the census, earn money from their own labor and keep it, and generally have all the day to day rights we take for granted now. While slavery was the law of the land, freedmen could own their own slaves. Also, while it was legal, in some slave states it was against the law to free a slave at all.
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