Which weeks?

Slavery was "ended" in the Confederacy by the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order issued by President Lincoln on New Year's Day 1863. It took effect in Union-controlled areas of the Confederacy immediately, freeing between 20 and 50 thousand people. Since they didn't recognize Lincoln's authority, the Confederates (surprise) didn't free their slaves. The EP was really a military and propaganda goal, though, and many questioned its staying power once the war was over.

As the war wound down, slaves living in areas taken by the Union's forces would have therefore been told they were free as a matter of military policy; William Faulkner in his book The Unvanquished describes a torrent of newly freed blacks marching through the night toward a river where the Yankee army is encamped:

Singly, in couples, in groups and families they began to appear from the woods, ahead of us, alongside of us and behind…men and women carrying babies and dragging older children by the hand, old men and women on improvised sticks and crutches, and very old ones sitting beside the road and even calling to us when we passed; there was one old woman who even walked along beside the wagon, holding to the bed and begging Granny to at least let her see the river before she died.

Not all reactions were the same; some slaves remained with their masters, unable to imagine living and working anywhere else. The Union officers, overwhelmed by slaves asking to enlist or work, probably originated the false promise of 'forty acres and a mule' to each freed slave.

Slaves in the border states (states which had legal slavery but never seceded) were not legally 'freed' until the 13th amendment, which was passed in January and formally adopted in December of 1865. Lincoln was murdered in April. The national mood was therefore largely one of mourning; any rejoicing had been done in January when the House of Representatives approved the Senate's version of the amendment.

Abolitionists had succeeded in their legal goals, but eradicating legal slavery didn't translate to an eradication of economic and social slavery, which would persist for decades due to the national and state governments' collective failure to normalize the legal status of freed slaves.

The general impression you would get, though, as you visited places in the 14 to 20 days after the War had ended there, was that left by war everywhere it passes: pain and desolation.

I'm in a 400 Civil War era class at Montclair State university right now and we are reading a book called Saving Savannah. In the book it talks mostly about Georgia. As the Union troops came further and further more Slaves were free'd and either 1. Joined Union service and did bitch work like dig trenches and put up tents. 2. They ran away to find family or to start a new life. An amazing thing to note is that many stayed in place after the war, they worked for their masters or they received plots of land on their masters old land which was either abandoned or designated by the Union. I am on chapter 13 of the book and have three more chapters left. If I learn anything else I'll update this.