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This essay explores how the authors of the vagrancy legislation, most of whom
were philanthropists deeply imbued with antislavery beliefs, reconciled a venerable
system of compulsion aimed at free but dependent people with the ascendant doc-
trine of liberty of contract. It diverges from themes central to previous studies of
postbellum charity reform: the rise of professional philanthropy, the transformation
in explanations for poverty, the discovery of mass unemployment. It also shifts the
focus from the advent of tramps and the plight of transients to the disorder per-
sonified by the beggar, someone who got something for nothing. Here, the prob-
lems of begging, contract relations, and forced labor take center stage, set against
the backdrop of the abolition of slavery.