THE FREEDMEN’S BUREAU
Reconstructing the American South
after the Civil War
by Paul A. Cimbala
Orig. Ed. 2005 (Anvil)
220 pp.
ISBN 978-1-57524-094-7
Paper
$26.25
T
he Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, better known as the
Freedmen’s Bureau, was established in the spring of 1865 to help white and
black Southerners make the transition from slavery to freedom, while securing
the basic civil rights of the ex-slaves. It failed to accomplish what its creators had
hoped, but its history tells us much about why Northerners and Southerners,
whites and blacks, approached Reconstruction in the way that they did and why that failure
occurred. The Freedmen’s Bureau: Reconstructing the American South after the Civil War is a succinct summary of the
agency’s history accompanied by
Contents
key documents that illustrate
Northern ideology, black expectaPreface
tions, and white Southern resisPart I—The Freedmen’s Bureau and Reconstruction
tance. Topics of the day, including
1. Establishing the Freedmen’s Bureau
2. Organizing the Bureau
labor, education, violence, politics,
3. Bureau Men Face Reconstruction
and justice place the federal
4. The Limits of Philanthropy
agency within the larger context of
5. The Bureau and the Freedpeople’s Desire for Land
post-Civil War history.
6. Nurturing Free Labor
About the Author
Paul A. Cimbala is a professor of
history at Fordham University in the
Bronx, New York, where he teaches
Civil War Era, Southern and African
American history. He received his
Ph.D. from Emory University in
Atlanta, Georgia. Prior to accepting
a position at Fordham, he was an
assistant editor with The Black
Abolitionist Papers Project at Florida
State University and an assistant
professor of history at the University
of South Carolina at Aiken. He is the
author of Under the Guardianship of
the Nation: The Freedmen’s Bureau
and the Reconstruction of Georgia,
1865-1867, and has edited numerous essay collections including (with
Randall M. Miller) The Freedmen’s
Bureau and Reconstruction: Reconsiderations. He is presently completing a study of slave musicians titled
Jester, Trickster, Priest: Black
Musicians from Slavery to Freedom
in the Rural American South and has
begun research on a history of the
Union Army’s Veteran Reserve
Corps.
7. Facilitating Education
8. Defining and Protecting the Rights of Freed Slaves
Part II—Documents
1. Senator Charles Sumner’s Speech in Defense of Establishing a Freedmen’s Bureau, June 13, 1864
2. Congress Establishes the Freedmen’s Bureau, March 3, 1865
3. A Meeting of Planters Held in Savannah, Georgia, June 6, 1865
4. O.O. Howard’s Rules and Regulations for Assistant Commissioners, May 30, 1865
5. Eliphalet Whittlesey Assumes Command of the North Carolina Bureau, July 1, 1865
6. FreedpeopleofYorkCounty,Virginia,PetitionforaBlackRepresentativeonaFreedmen’sBureauTribunal,July14,1866
7. A Bureau Superintendent Reports on the Organization of the Agency in North Carolina, August 7, 1865
8. A Bureau Agent’s Experiences in Carnesville, Georgia, August 29, 1868
9. A Petition for Assistance from North Carolina Freedpeople and a Bureau Officer’s Response, July 10, 1867
10. The Bureau Acts as a Public Health Agency in Helena, Arkansas, May 11, 1867
11. The Restoration of the Sherman Reservation Lands on the Georgia Coast, February 14, 1866
12. The Restoration of Property in the Sherman Reservation on the South Carolina Coast, May 30, 1866
13. Assistant Commissioner Edgar M. Gregory Lectures White Texans on Free Labor, January 20, 1866
14. John Emory Bryant’s Labor Regulations, June 12, 1865
15. Northern Reaction to Bureau Labor Guidelines, July 1, 1865
16. A Bureau Officer Enforces a Contract on Freedpeople in Louisiana, April 20, 1867
17. A Bureau Labor Contract Form from Muscogee County, Georgia, February 24, 1866
18. A Lowndes County Mississippi Labor Contract Approved by the Bureau, February 26, 1866
19. Collecting the Freedpeople’s Pay in Southwest Georgia, March 21–June 18, 1868
20. Instructions from the Assistant Commissioner of Louisiana to His Agents, December 9, 1867
21. A Report on Education in North Carolina and a Radical Suggestion for Funding Freedmen’s Schools, October 31, 1866
22. William J. White Organizes Schools in Georgia, March 29, 1867–June 4, 1867
23. The Bureau’s Continued Educational Endeavors in Kentucky, July 17, 1868
24. An Officer Stands Up for the Freedpeople’s Civil Rights in Tyler, Texas, June 8, 1868
25. Bureau Intervention in an Illegal Apprenticeship in Kentucky, March 9-13, 1867
26. Reporting Outrages in Texas, March 22, 1867
27. Assistant Commissioner Nelson A. Miles Urges the Freedpeople’s Participation in the Freedmen’s Savings Bank,
May 18, 1868
28. Report of the South Carolina Bureau’s Inspector in the Agency’s Last Active Months, October 17, 1868
29. The Freedpeople of Fort Bend County, Texas, Petition to Keep the Bureau, October 1868
Conclusion
Select Bibliography
Index
AbouttheAuthor
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* * * REVIEWS * * *
“Cimbala presents a fast-paced, detail-oriented institutional history of the Freedmen’s Bureau…
Readers will walk away from Cimbala’s account with a clear understanding of the ideological parameters of the agency, its multifarious and complex undertakings, and the changing attitudes and
expectations of the bureau men who worked on a daily basis to implement Reconstruction policies… Well-chosen documents from the bureau field office records, now available on microfilm
from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), in particular, reveal the hopes of
both former slaves and former masters as well as the constraints under which bureau men operated at the local level.”— H-Net Reviews
“…a balanced, succinct summary of the history of the Freedmen’s Bureau that assesses its successes and shortcomings within the larger context of post-Civil War history. To his credit, the author fully engages the many controversial issues that surrounded this short-lived federal
agency…Readers will find much to like in The Freedmen’s Bureau.”—The South Carolina Historical
Magazine
“Paul A. Cimbala is a recognized expert on the Freedmen’s Bureau. As the author of the best of a
clutch of recent state-level studies of this important agency, he is well equipped to provide the
concise synthesis, grounded in a close acquaintance with the primary sources and a mastery of
the secondary literature, that the exercise demands…the documents offer a revealing sample of the
kinds of primary evidence on which our understanding of the bureau’s history is based...provides
an excellent summary of what historians are currently thinking about the bureau. With its wellchosen collection of documents, it constitutes an attractive package.”—Journal of Southern History
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