FREEDMEN'S BUREAU

The Freedmen's Bureau, officially known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, was established on March 3, 1865. The agency, a part of the War Department, owed its very being to the Union's Civil War victory. Absent the war's consequences, particularly emancipation, the federal government would have had no reason to establish such an extraordinary organization that had the potential to insert itself into state, local, and individual affairs as it tried to guide white and black Southerners in their transition from a slave society to a free society. Because the agency was a departure from past experience, it was the product of compromise. Political restraint meant that the Freedmen's Bureau never had the resources or the power to accomplish what Congress demanded of it or what the freedpeople expected of it.

labor, land, and education

Circumstances shaped the Bureau into an organization that was part labor regulator, part social service agency, part peacekeeper, and part civil rights advocate for the freed slaves. Bureau commander Major General Oliver Otis Howard supervised officers, agents, education officials, and medical men who carried the Bureau's presence down to the local level. Not all were ideal missionaries of Northern ideals, but the majority of these men were committed to securing the fruits of Union victory, including the economic rights and civil rights of the former slaves. Approximately 2,441 men served as officers and agents of the Bureau during its lifetime, but at any given time there were never sufficient numbers on duty to blanket the South with their presence. At the end of 1865, there were only 799 Bureau men, including clerks; by the end of 1868, Bureau personnel rosters carried a total of 901, with over a third being clerks.

Bureau officials brought relief to white and black Southerners left destitute by the war and subsequent poor harvests. The Bureau never considered itself a charitable organization; most of its personnel, reflecting ideas of the time, believed that prolonged charity damaged the character of its recipients. Bureau men were primarily missionaries for a Northern-style free labor system based on written contracts that would allow the agency to supervise the fledgling work arrangements. Former slaves were disappointed the Bureau did not act as an agent of land redistribution, and some freedpeople felt betrayed when the agency returned property, on which they had settled, to white claimants. The majority of freedpeople, however, accepted the need to work and appreciated the Bureau's assistance especially when their employers mistreated them. While many Southern white employers considered the process to be no more than Yankee meddling in their personal affairs, others believed the work documents might impose some degree of labor discipline on their former slaves. White employers eventually used labor arrangements to oppress black workers, but that was not the Bureau's intention.

Complementary to a free labor system that taught the freedpeople the virtues of hard work by experience was an educational system that would instill similar virtues in the classroom. The Bureau acted as a coordinator of the efforts of freedpeople and Northern charitable associations to found schools, but also provided some funding to assist them in securing buildings, books, and teachers. The Bureau also attempted to protect schools and teachers from white violence, a problem that also troubled Bureau personnel. Officers and agents found themselves ostracized, threatened, and attacked by whites; a few officers and agents were murdered.

From the outset, white Southerners knew the Bureau was a temporary organization authorized by law to exist for only one year from the end of the Civil War. While Congress voted to continue the agency on July 16,

1866, it did so over President Andrew Johnson's objections, which confirmed in the minds of many white Southerners that the agency lacked the support of its commander in chief. Such circumstances did not nurture respect for the agency among white Southerners, who constantly tested its power and, more often than not, found it wanting. Ultimately, the Bureau never had sufficient power to protect the freedpeople from whites who feared black education, economic independence, and political activity.

Overworked agents and officers relied primarily on arbitration to settle difficulties between whites and blacks, acted as the freedpeople's "next friend" when they had to take their cases to civil or criminal court, and interceded with the military authorities when situations required the use of military force. In 1868 the Bureau began to reduce its presence in the South and in January 1869 restricted itself to education and assisting black veterans in obtaining their bounties. Congress terminated the Bureau at the end of June 1872. Its termination, along with the end of Reconstruction in 1877, greatly slowed the social revolution in the South begun during the Civil War. The black struggle for economic advancement and educational equality would continue, however, as black demands for civil rights rose after World War I and World War II.

bibliography

Bentley, George R. A History of the Freedmen's Bureau. New York: Octagon Books, 1970.

Cimbala, Paul A., and Randall M. Miller, eds. The Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction: Reconsiderations. New York: Fordham University Press, 1999.

Cimbala, Paul. Under the Guardianship of the Nation: The Freedmen's Bureau and the Reconstruction of Georgia, 1865–1870. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003.

Cimbala, Paul. The Freedmen's Bureau: Reconstructing the American South After the Civil War. Melbourne, FL: Krieger Publishing Company, 2004.

Crouch, Barry A. The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Texans. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.

Finley, Randy. From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom: The Freedmen's Bureau in Arkansas, 1865–1869. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1996.

McFeely, William S. Yankee Stepfather: General O. O. Howard and the Freedmen. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968.

Nieman, Donald G. To Set the Law in Motion: The Freedmen's Bureau and the Legal Rights of Blacks, 1865–1868. Millwood, NY: KTO Press, 1979.

Oubre, Claude F. Forty Acres and a Mule: The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Landownership. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978.

Paul A. Cimbala

See also:African Americans (Freed People); Education; Johnson, Andrew; Occupation of the South; Reconstruction.