The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau,[1] was a U.S. government agency of early post American Civil War Reconstruction, assisting freedmen (i.e., former slaves) in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865, and operated briefly as a federal agency after the War, from 1865 to 1872, to direct provisions, clothing, and fuel for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children.[2]
In 1863, the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission was established. Two years later, as a result of the inquiry[3][page needed][4] the Freedmen's Bureau Bill was passed, which established the Freedmen's Bureau as initiated by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. It was intended to last for one year after the end of the Civil War.[5] The Bureau became a part of the United States Department of War, as Congress provided no funding for it. The War Department was the only agency with funds the Freedmen's Bureau could use and which had an existing presence in the South.
Headed by Union Army General Oliver O. Howard, the Bureau started operations in 1865. From the beginning, its representatives found its tasks very difficult, in part because Southern legislatures passed Black Codes that restricted movement, conditions of labor, and other civil rights of African Americans, nearly replicating the conditions of slavery. Also, the Freedmen's Bureau only controlled a limited amount of arable land.[6]
The Bureau's powers were expanded to help African Americans find family members from whom they had become separated during the war. It arranged to teach them to read and write—skills considered critical by the freedmen themselves as well as by the government.[7] Bureau agents also served as legal advocates for African Americans in both state and federal courts, mostly in cases dealing with family issues.[7] The Bureau encouraged former major planters to rebuild their plantations and pay wages to their previously enslaved workers. It kept an eye on the contracts between the newly free laborers and planters, given that few freedmen had yet gained adequate reading skills, and pushed whites and blacks to work together in a free-labor market as employers and employees rather than as masters and slaves.[7]
In 1866 Congress renewed the charter for the Bureau. President Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat who had succeeded to the office following Lincoln's assassination[8] in 1865, vetoed the bill, arguing that the Bureau encroached on states' rights, relied inappropriately on the military in peacetime, gave blacks help that poor whites had never had, and would ultimately prevent freed slaves from becoming self-sufficient by rendering them dependent on public assistance.[5][9] Though the 39th United States Congress—controlled by Radical Republicans—overrode Johnson's veto, by 1869 Southern Democrats in Congress had deprived the Bureau of most of its funding, and as a result it had to cut much of its staff.[5][10] By 1870 the Bureau had been weakened further due to the rise of Ku Klux Klan (KKK) violence across the South; members of the KKK and other terrorist organizations, attacked both blacks and sympathetic white Republicans, including teachers.[5] Northern Democrats also opposed the Bureau's work, painting it as a program that would make African Americans "lazy".[11]
In 1872 Congress abruptly abandoned the program, refusing to approve renewal legislation. It did not inform Howard, whom U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant had transferred to Arizona to settle hostilities between the Apache and settlers. Grant's Secretary of War William W. Belknap was hostile to Howard's leadership and authority at the Bureau. Belknap aroused controversy among Republicans by his reassignment of Howard.[12]
The Bureau mission was to help solve everyday problems of the newly freed slaves, such as obtaining food, medical care, communication with family members, and jobs. Between 1865 and 1869, it distributed 15 million rations of food to freed African Americans and 5 million rations to impoverished whites, and set up a system by which planters could borrow rations in order to feed freedmen they employed. Although the Bureau set aside $350,000 for this latter service, only $35,000 (10%) was borrowed by planters.[13]
The Bureau's humanitarian efforts had limited success. Medical treatment of the freedmen was severely deficient,[14][page needed] as few Southern doctors, all of whom were white, would treat them. Much infrastructure had been destroyed by the war, and people had few means of improving sanitation. Blacks had little opportunity to become medical personnel. Travelers unknowingly carried epidemics of cholera and yellow fever along the river corridors, which broke out across the South and caused many fatalities, especially among the poor.
Freedmen's Bureau agents initially complained that freedwomen were refusing to contract their labor. One of the first actions black families took for independence was to withdraw women's labor from fieldwork. The Bureau attempted to force freedwomen to work by insisting that their husbands sign contracts making the whole family available as field labor in the cotton industry, and by declaring that unemployed freedwomen should be treated as vagrants just as black men were.[15] The Bureau did allow some exceptions, such as married women with employed husbands, and some "worthy" women who had been widowed or abandoned and had large families of small children to care for. Women considered "unworthy" by the Bureau, were often penalized.[15]
Before the Civil War the enslaved could not marry legally, and most marriages had been informal, although planters often presided over "marriage" ceremonies for their enslaved. After the war, the Freedmen's Bureau performed numerous marriages for freed couples who asked for it. As many husbands, wives, and children had been forcibly separated under slavery, the Bureau agents helped families reunite after the war. 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.[16]
The most widely recognized accomplishments of the Freedmen's Bureau were in education. Prior to the Civil War, no Southern state had a system of universal, state-supported public education; in addition, most had prohibited both enslaved and free blacks from gaining an education. This meant learning to read and write, and do simple arithmetic. Former slaves wanted public education while the wealthier whites opposed the idea. Freedmen had a strong desire to learn to read and write; some had already started schools at refugee camps; others worked hard to establish schools in their communities even prior to the advent of the Freedmen's Bureau.[17] The Freedmen's Bureau schools were also open to poor whites, however, almost no whites attended because "Despite the absence of statewide systems in most Southern states, most parents preferred to consign their children to illiteracy rather than to see them educated alongside black children."[18]
Oliver Otis Howard was appointed as the first Freedmen's Bureau Commissioner. Through his leadership, the bureau set up four divisions: Government-Controlled Lands, Records, Financial Affairs, and Medical Affairs. Education was considered part of the Records division. Howard turned over confiscated property including planters' mansions, government buildings, books, and furniture to superintendents to be used in the education of freedmen. He provided transportation and room and board for teachers. Many Northerners came south to educate freedmen.
By 1866, Northern missionary and aid societies worked in conjunction with the Freedmen's Bureau to provide education for former slaves. The American Missionary Association (AMA) was particularly active, establishing eleven "colleges" in Southern states for the education of freedmen. The primary focus of these groups was to raise funds to pay teachers and manage schools, while the secondary focus was the day-to-day operation of individual schools. After 1866, Congress appropriated some funds to operate the freedmen's schools. The main source of educational revenue for these schools came through a Congressional Act that gave the Freedmen's Bureau the power to seize Confederate property for educational use.
George Ruby, an African American, served as a 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. Blacks supported him, but planters and other whites opposed him.[19]
Overall, the Bureau spent $5 million to set up schools for blacks. By the end of 1865, more than 90,000 former slaves were enrolled as students in such public schools. Attendance rates at the new schools for freedmen were about 80%. Brigadier General Samuel Chapman Armstrong created and led Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia in 1868. It is now known as Hampton University.
The Freedmen's Bureau published their own freedmen's textbook. They emphasized the bootstrap philosophy, encouraging freedmen to believe that each person had the ability to work hard and to do better in life.[clarification needed] These readers included traditional literacy lessons, as well as selections on the life and works of Abraham Lincoln, excerpts from the Bible focused on forgiveness, biographies of famous African Americans[example needed] with emphasis on their piety, humbleness, and industry; and essays on humility, the work ethic, temperance, loving one's enemies, and avoiding bitterness.[20]
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 sought this new opportunity to learn. After the Bureau was abolished, some of its achievements collapsed under the weight of white violence against schools and teachers for blacks. Most Reconstruction-era legislatures had established public education but, after the 1870s, when white Democrats regained power of Southern governments, they reduced funds available to fund public education, particularly for blacks. Beginning in 1890 in Mississippi, Democratic-dominated legislatures in the South passed new state constitutions disenfranchising most blacks by creating barriers to voter registration. They then passed Jim Crow laws establishing legal segregation of public places. Segregated schools and other services for blacks were consistently underfunded by the Southern legislatures.[21]
By 1871, Northerners' interest in reconstructing the South had waned. Northerners were beginning to tire of the effort that Reconstruction required, were discouraged by the high rate of continuing violence around elections, and were ready for the South to take care of itself. All of the Southern states had created new constitutions that established universal, publicly funded education. Groups based in the North began to redirect their money toward universities and colleges founded to educate African-American leaders.[22]