Hello,

This question really seems to have two parts, the first being if people held in bondage suffered from psychological conditions as a result of their bondage, and if bondsmen stayed on their plantations when they were freed after the war.

While I am unable to answer the psychological question, as many of the conditions that are recognized today haven't been diagnosed until very recently. Stockholm syndrome only was first used as a term in 1973, and any attempt to diagnose someone from over a hundred years ago would result in quite a bit of speculation and reading between the lines of a few select passages from larger sources.

However, when discussing the second question, whither bondsmen stayed in the plantation areas they were held in prior to the war, then the answer is overwhelmingly yes, bondsmen continued to live where they were previously held.

While this might seem strange, the reasons for many staying were simple, first, they had a large community on the prior plantation that they relied on before the war, and it would be incredibly hard to move away to a strange place, away from family and friends. The community on the plantation area supported each other heavily, and that support continued after the war.

Second, the land that many Southern Confederates might have lost during the war, often by fleeing from the coming Union army, was repatriated to them by the US government in the years after the war, restoring the legal rights to the land, although not the people on it. To maintain control over the population still living on the plantation, local laws were enacted know as Jim Crow laws. These laws were very localized, with small towns of only a couple hundred people writing their own laws that differed from those a couple miles away. These laws were written to limit the movement of blacks, and the opportunities they could seek living in these areas. One law that was common required that all blacks must be employed by a white person, or else face jail time. In old plantation areas, the only white people living there were often the plantation owners and those few whites working for them, leading to the now freed black people being required, by law, to work for their old masters.

This led to a process known as sharecropping, under which blacks would rent farmland from a landlord, the individual who owned the land, and being required to provide a share of their crop to that landlord because they didn’t have the money, and sometimes legal right, to buy the land.

With that being said, after the war, many of those who were freed moved off the plantation area, and newspapers of the time showed a considerable amount of advertisements for family who were separated and hoping to find one another.

I hope this answers your question, if you have any more, please let me know!