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Freedmen's Bureau


(1865 – 72) U.S. agency established during Reconstruction to help freed slaves in their transition to freedom. Officially named the U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, it was directed by Oliver O. Howard. It built hospitals and provided medical assistance to more than 1 million freed blacks and 21 million rations for blacks and whites. It also built more than 1,000 schools for black children and helped found colleges and teacher-training institutes for blacks, but it had little success in safeguarding civil rights and promoting land redistribution. Congress later responded to pressure from white Southerners by terminating the bureau.

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US History Encyclopedia: Freedmen's Bureau

On 3 March 1865, Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, or the Freedmen's Bureau, to assist black Americans in their transition from slavery to freedom at the end of the Civil War. The bureau provided emergency food, shelter, and medical care to people dislocated by the war; established schools; conducted military courts to hear complaints of both former slaves and former masters; put freedmen to work on abandoned or confiscated lands; and supervised the postemancipation work arrangements made by the freedmen.

Congress assigned the Bureau to the War Department; President Johnson named Major General O. O. Howard commissioner. He also appointed assistant commissioners in the seceded states to direct the work of the Freedmen's Bureau agents, who were sent into the field. Congress did not appropriate any money for agent salaries, so army commanders detailed young officers for Bureau duty as agents. A few of them were black officers, but resentment by some powerful white people caused most of these agents to be either discharged or moved into relatively uncontroversial posts in the education division. In 1868 bureau officials numbered nine hundred.

Howard, known to some as the "Christian General," had a charitable attitute toward the freedmen. He had commanded an army in General William Tecumseh Sherman'S March to the Sea and had visited the South Carolina coastal islands seized in 1861 from fleeing planters. Plantations there had been divided into small holdings and farmed successfully by former slaves. With this example in mind, Congress directed the bureau to divide similarly abandoned lands across the South into forty-acre units and award them to the freedmen. Shortly thereafter President Andrew Johnson abrogated this important precedent for land redistribution by using presidential pardons to return to white former owners nearly all the land that was to have been divided.

With the restoration of the lands to white owners, bureau agents tried to convince the freedmen to support themselves and their families by entering into contracts, either for labor to work in field gangs or for land to farm as tenants or Sharecroppers. In addition to encouraging and supervising these work arrangements, the bureau, during its seven years of existence, also appropriated more than $15 million for food and other aid to the freedmen. Agents distributed these funds throughout the southern and border states in which most of the nation's four million black citizens lived.

The most important continuing contribution of the Freedmen's Bureau was in the area of education. Private freedmen's aid societies supplied teachers and their salaries; the bureau supplied buildings and transportation. Howard participated enthusiastically in fundraising for the schools, particularly after the early efforts at land re-form had been aborted. By 1871 eleven colleges and universities and sixty-one normal schools had been founded. Among the most important were Hampton Institute, Atlanta University, Talladega College, Straight College (later Dillard University), Fisk University, and Howard University. The bureau spent over $6 million for its schools and educational work.

Congress never intended that the Freedmen's Bureau would be a permanent agency. The original authorization was for one year. In 1866, over President Johnson's veto, Congress extended the life of the agency and enhanced its powers. The Freedmen's Bureau was closed in 1872. Its legacies were the colleges begun under its auspices and the aspirations engendered among African Americans.

Bibliography

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

Cox, LaWanda, "From Emancipation to Segregation: National Policy and Southern Blacks." In Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honor of Sanford W. Higginbotham. Edited by John B. Boles and Evelyn Thomas Nolan. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987.

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

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

Nieman, Donald G., ed. The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Freedom. Vol. 2: African American Life in the Post-Emancipation South, 1861–1900. New York: Garland, 1994.

—William S. McFeely/C. P.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Freedmen's Bureau,
in U.S. history, a federal agency, formed to aid and protect the newly freed blacks in the South after the Civil War. Established by an act of Mar. 3, 1865, under the name “bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands,” it was to function for one year after the close of the war. A bill extending its life indefinitely and greatly increasing its powers was vetoed (Feb. 19, 1866) by President Andrew Johnson, who viewed the legislation as an unwarranted (and unconstitutional) continuation of war powers in peacetime. The veto marked the beginning of the President's long and unsuccessful fight with the radical Republican Congress over Reconstruction. In slightly different form, the bill was passed over Johnson's veto on July 16, 1866. Organized under the War Dept., with Gen. Oliver O. Howard as its commissioner, and thus backed by military force, the bureau was one of the most powerful instruments of Reconstruction. Howard divided the ex-slave states, including the border slave states that had remained in the Union, into 10 districts, each headed by an assistant commissioner. The bureau's work consisted chiefly of five kinds of activity—relief work for both blacks and whites in war-stricken areas, regulation of black labor under the new conditions, administration of justice in cases concerning the blacks, management of abandoned and confiscated property, and support of education for blacks. In its relief and educational activities the bureau compiled an excellent record, which, however, was too often marred by unprincipled agents, both military and civilian, in the local offices. Its efforts toward establishing the freed blacks as landowners were nil. To a great degree the bureau operated as a political machine, organizing the black vote for the Republican party; its political activities made it thoroughly hated in the South. When, under the congressional plan of Reconstruction, new state governments based on black suffrage were organized in the South (with many agents holding various offices), the work of the Freedmen's Bureau was discontinued (July 1, 1869). Its educational activities, however, were carried on for another three years.

Bibliography

See P. S. Peirce, The Freedmen's Bureau (1904); L. J. Webster, The Operation of the Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina (1916, repr. 1970); G. R. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen's Bureau (1955, repr. 1970); M. Abbott, The Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina (1967).

 
Wikipedia: Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands
A Bureau agent stands between an armed group of Southern whites and a group of freed slaves in this 1868 picture from Harpers' Weekly
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A Bureau agent stands between an armed group of Southern whites and a group of freed slaves in this 1868 picture from Harpers' Weekly

On March 3, 1865, Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, also known as the Freedmen's Bureau, was a federal agency that was formed during Reconstruction to aid distressed refugees of the American Civil War. It became primarily an agency to help the Freedmen (freed slaves) in the South. The Bureau was established by Congress. It was part of the United States Department of War, and headed by Union General Oliver O. Howard. Fully operational[citation needed] from June 1865 through December 1868, it was disbanded by President Andrew Johnson.

Overview

In 1865, its main role was providing emergency food, housing and medical aid to refugees. It could also help find families. By late 1865, it focused its work on helping the Freedmen adjust to new conditions. Its main job was setting up work opportunities and supervising labor contracts. It soon became, in effect, a military court that handled legal issues. By 1866, it was attacked by former Confederate leaders for organizing Blacks against the ruling of ised Blacks that the plantation lands of their former and employers. Although some of their subordinate agents were unscrupulous or incompetent, the majority of local Bureau agents were hindered in carrying out their duties by the opposition of former Confederates, the lack of a military presence to enforce their authority, and an excessive amount of paperwork [1].

On March 3rd, 1865, the Freedmen’s Bureau was created by Congress to aide former slaves through education, health care and employment.

The bureau was put into effect to protect the best interests of former slaves. $17,000 was spent to help establish 4,000 schools, 100 hospitals and also homes and food for past slaves. This bureau was also designed to help these former slaves find new jobs and improve their education and health. The facilities established were put into effect for these reasons. Howard University was also established in Washington in 1867 with the help of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

The Freedmen’s Bureau was named after General Oliver Howard, who was a Civil War hero. General Howard was also the commissioner of the Bureau of the Refugees. Nearly a year after the bureau was put into effect, the Radical Republicans who put the bureau into action, attempted to increase the powers of the bureau. President Andrew Johnson vetoed this request in February of 1866.

Achievements

Day-to-day duties

One of the more important—but rarely emphasized—motives of the Bureau was to help solve everyday problems of the refugees. They urgently needed clothing, food, medicine, communication with family members, and jobs. The Bureau gave out about 15 million rations of food to blacks[2]. Also, the Bureau set up a system where planters could borrow rations in order to feed freedmen they employed. Though the Bureau set aside $350,000 for this service, only $35,000 was borrowed.[citation needed]

The Bureau attempted to strengthen existing medical care facilities as well as expand services into rural areas through newly established clinics. The Bureau succeeded in giving medical care to over one million people. Medical assistance and supplies as well as food were in short supply, and civil authorities often were reluctant to cooperate with the Bureau in aiding the former slaves. Despite the good intentions, efforts, and limited success of the Bureau, medical treatment of the freedmen was severely deficient. [3]

Gender roles

Freedmen's Bureau agents at first complained that freedwomen were not working as they should and were refusing to contract their labor. They attempted to make freedwomen work by insisting that their husbands sign contracts obligating the whole family to work on cotton, and by declaring that unemployed freedwomen should be treated as vagrants just as men were. The Bureau did allow some exceptions such as certain married women with employed husbands and some "worthy" women who had been widowed or abandoned and had large families of small children and thus could not work. "Unworthy" women, meaning the unruly and especially prostitutes, were the ones usually subjected to punishment for vagrancy. [4] Under slavery, marriages were informal; slavery disrupted many families as did wartime chaos. Many Freedmen attempted to find their spouses and children, and the Bureau agents helped. The Bureau had an informal regional communications system that allowed agents to send inquiries and provide answers. It sometimes provided transportation to reunite families. Freedmen and freedwomen turned to the Bureau for assistance in resolving issues of abandonment and divorce.

Education

Women sewing at the Freedmen's Union Industrial School, Richmond, Virginia
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Women sewing at the Freedmen's Union Industrial School, Richmond, Virginia

The most widely recognized among the achievements of the Freedmen’s Bureau are its accomplishments in the field of education. George Ruby, an African American, served as teacher and school administrator and as a traveling inspector for the bureau, observing local conditions, aiding in the establishment of black schools, and evaluating the performance of Bureau field officers. His efforts met with enthusiasm for education on the part of blacks and bitter opposition, including physical violence, from many planters and other whites. [5] Overall the Bureau spent five million dollars to set up schools for blacks. By the end of 1865, more than 90,000 former slaves were enrolled as students in public schools. The Ku Klux Klan and various other similar groups had been created by that time. Attendance rates at the new schools for freedmen were between 79 and 82 percent. An important educator was Brigadier General Samuel Chapman Armstrong; as an agent of the Bureau he created and led Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute.

By 1870, there were more than 1,000 schools for freedmen in the South.[citation needed] J. W. Alvord, an inspector for the Bureau, wrote that the freedmen "have the natural thirst for knowledge," aspire to "power and influence … coupled with learning," and are excited by "the special study of books." Among the former slaves, both children and adults indulged in this new opportunity to learn. It helped African Americans find jobs and homes. About 150 schools were opened in Texas, and 4,300 schools in all were opened for African Americans. After the Bureau was abolished, its achievements collapsed under the weight of white violence against schools and teachers and the gutting of funds for all schools by Redeemer legislatures devoted to limited government.[6]

Church establishment

The freedmen sought the Bureau's aid in establishing churches. After the war, control over existing churches was a highly contentious issue; Northern Methodists seized control of Southern Methodist buildings in some cities. Whereas whites and blacks had worshiped together before the war, now they mutually agreed[citation needed] to separate. The Bureau, with close ties to Northern Methodist and other churches, facilitated new buildings, though it did not spend any government money on churches. Northern mission societies collected of funds for land, buildings, teachers' salaries, and basic necessities such as books and furniture.[7]

Opposition

Poster attacking Freedmen's Bureau
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Poster attacking Freedmen's Bureau

Most of the assistant commissioners, realizing that blacks would not receive fair trials in the civil courts, tried to handle black cases in their own Bureau courts. Whites objected loudly and said this was unconstitutional. In Alabama, state and county judges were commissioned as Bureau agents. They were to try cases involving blacks with no distinctions on racial grounds. If a judge refused, martial law could be instituted in his district. All but three judges accepted their unwanted commissions, and the governor urged compliance.[8]

Perhaps the most difficult region was Louisiana's Caddo-Bossier district. It had not experienced wartime devastation or Union occupation. Understaffed and weakly supported by federal troops, well-meaning Bureau agents found their investigations blocked and authority undermined at every turn by recalcitrant planters. Murders of freedmen were common, and suspects in these cases generally went unprosecuted. Bureau agents did manage to negotiate labor contracts, build schools and hospitals,[citation needed] and provide the freedmen a sense of their own humanity through the agents' willingness to help.[9]

Notes

  1. ^ Cimbala 1992
  2. ^ Goldhaber 1992
  3. ^ Pearson 2002
  4. ^ Farmer-Kaiser, 2004
  5. ^ Crouch 1997
  6. ^ Goldhaber 1992
  7. ^ Morrow 1954
  8. ^ Foner 1988
  9. ^ Smith 2000

See also

Bibliography

Primary sources

General

  • Bentley George R. A History of the Freedmen's Bureau (1955)
  • Carpenter, John A.; Sword and Olive Branch: Oliver Otis Howard (1999) full biography of Bureau leader
  • Cimbala, Paul A. and Trefousse, Hans L. (eds.) The Freedmen's Bureau: Reconstructing the American South After the Civil War. 2005. essays by scholars
  • W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, "The Freedmen's Bureau" (1901) by leading black scholar
  • Foner Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988) general history
  • Litwack, Leon F. Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. 1979. Winner of Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award.
  • McFeely, William S. Yankee Stepfather: General O.O. Howard and the Freedmen. 1994.

Education

  • Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (1988)
  • Butchart, Ronald E. Northern Schools, Southern Blacks, and Reconstruction: Freedmen's Education, 1862-1875 (1980)
  • Crouch, Barry A. "Black Education in Civil War and Reconstruction Louisiana: George T. Ruby, the Army, and the Freedmen's Bureau" Louisiana History 1997 38(3): 287-308. Issn: 0024-6816
  • Goldhaber, Michael. "A Mission Unfulfilled: Freedmen's Education in North Carolina, 1865-1870" Journal of Negro History 1992 77(4): 199-210. Issn: 0022-2992
  • Jones, Jacqueline. Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865-1873 U of North Carolina Press 1980
  • Morris, Robert C. Reading, 'Riting, and Reconstruction: The Education of Freedmen in the South, 1861-1870 1981.
  • Richardson, Joe M. Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861-1890 U of Georgia Press, 1986
  • Span, Christopher M. "'I Must Learn Now or Not at All': Social and Cultural Capital in the Educational Initiatives of Formerly Enslaved African Americans in Mississippi, 1862-1869," The Journal of African American History, 2002 pp 196-222
  • Swint, Henry Lee. The Northern Teacher in the South: 1862-1870 (New York, 1967).
  • Williams, Heather Andrea; "'Clothing Themselves in Intelligence': The Freedpeople, Schooling, and Northern Teachers, 1861-1871" The Journal of African American History 2002. pp 372+.
  • Williams, Heather Andrea. Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom U of North Carolina Press, 2006

Specialized studies

  • Bethel, Elizabeth . "The Freedmen's Bureau in Alabama," Journal of Southern History Vol. 14, No. 1, Feb., 1948 pp. 49-92 online at JSTOR
  • Cimbala, Paul A. "On the Front Line of Freedom: Freedmen's Bureau Officers and Agents in Reconstruction Georgia, 1865-1868". Georgia Historical Quarterly 1992 76(3): 577-611. Issn: 0016-8297.
  • Cimbala, Paul A. Under the Guardianship of the Nation: the Freedmen's Bureau and the Reconstruction of Georgia, 1865-1870 U. of Georgia Press, 1997.
  • Click, Patricia C. Time Full of Trial: The Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony, 1862-1867 (2001)]
  • Crouch, Barry. The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Texans (1992)
  • Crouch; Barry A. "The 'Chords of Love': Legalizing Black Marital and Family Rights in Postwar Texas" The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 79, 1994
  • Durrill, Wayne K. "Political Legitimacy and Local Courts: 'Politicks at Such a Rage' in a Southern Community during Reconstruction" in Journal of Southern History, Vol. 70 #3, 2004 pp 577-617
  • Farmer-Kaiser, Mary. "’Are They Not in Some Sorts Vagrants?’ Gender and the Efforts of the Freedmen's Bureau to Combat Vagrancy in the Reconstruction South” Georgia Historical Quarterly 2004 88(1): 25-49. Issn: 0016-8297
  • Finley, Randy. From Slavery to Uncertain Future: the Freedmen's Bureau in Arkansas, 1865-1869 U. of Arkansas Press, 1996.
  • Gerteis, Louis S. From Contraband to Freedmen: Federal Policy toward Southern Blacks, 1861-1865 1973.
  • Kolchin, Peter. First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction 1972.
  • Lieberman, Robert C. "The Freedmen's Bureau and the Politics of Institutional Structure" Social Science History 1994 18(3): 405-437. Issn: 0145-5532
  • Lowe, Richard. "The Freedman's Bureau and Local Black Leadership" Journal of American History 1993 80(3): 989-998. Issn: 0021-8723
  • Morrow Ralph Ernst. "The Northern Methodists in Reconstruction". Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41 (September 1954): 197-218. in JSTOR
  • May J. Thomas. "Continuity and Change in the Labor Program of the Union Army and the Freedmen's Bureau". Civil War History 17 (September 1971): 245-54.
  • Oubre, Claude F. Forty Acres and a Mule: The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Land Ownership 1978.
  • Pearson, Reggie L. "'There Are Many Sick, Feeble, and Suffering Freedmen': the Freedmen's Bureau's Health-care Activities During Reconstruction in North Carolina, 1865-1868" North Carolina Historical Review 2002 79(2): 141-181. Issn: 0029-2494 .
  • Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the Civil War'. Russell & Russell. (1953)
  • Richter, William L. Overreached on All Sides: The Freedmen's Bureau Administrators in Texas, 1865-1868 1991.
  • Ransom, Roger L. Conflict and Compromise. Cambridge University Press. 1989. economic history
  • Oubre, Claude F. Forty Acres and a Mule. Louisiana State University Press. Baton Rouge and London. 1978.
  • Rodrigue, John C. "Labor Militancy and Black Grassroots Political Mobilization in the Louisiana Sugar Region, 1865-1868" in Journal of Southern History, Vol. 67 #1, 2001 pp 115-45
  • Schwalm, Leslie A. "'Sweet Dreams of Freedom': Freedwomen's Reconstruction of Life and Labor in Lowcountry South Carolina Journal of Women's History, Vol. 9 #1, 1997 pp 9-32
  • Smith, Solomon K. "The Freedmen's Bureau in Shreveport: the Struggle for Control of the Red River District" Louisiana History 2000 41(4): 435-465. Issn: 0024-6816
  • Williamson, Joel. After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction, 1861-1877 1965.
  • Freedmen's Bureau in Texas
  1. ^ Cimbala 1992
  2. ^ Goldhaber 1992
  3. ^ Pearson 2002
  4. ^ Farmer-Kaiser, 2004
  5. ^ Crouch 1997
  6. ^ Goldhaber 1992
  7. ^ Morrow 1954
  8. ^ Foner 1988
  9. ^ Smith 2000

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
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