The Freedmen’s Bureau
Setting the scene
The players
• The freedpeople (those who had been enslaved)
– Want to reconstruct meaningful lives in freedom
• The planters (and their representatives in
government)
– Want coerced labor necessary to continue to generate
profits
• The state (the national government)
– Wanted profitable but “free” exploitation of periphery
to benefit the nation
What freedpeople wanted:
“peasant proprietorship”
• To reconstitute families, and work in families
(rather than in the gangs demanded by plantation
labor)
• To engage in market relations only on nonexploitative terms
• To produce for subsistence and local exchange
(rather than for the market)
• To reconstitute themselves as a self-sufficient
peasantry (as opposed to a wage-earning
proletariat)
-
-
Access to capital
+
+
the state
Desire for labor control
planters
freedpeople
Being freed into a competitive capitalist economy with virtually no capital,
the freedpeople were ripe for exploitation and coercion. Both the planters
and the state had an interest in the persistence of economic success in the
plantation complex. How would they fare from place to place?
• Proletarian: freedpeople compelled by low
availability of land, competitive market conditions
, and law to continue to work on plantations on
“free” (but exploited) wage-labor basis
• Peasantry: freedpeople able to reconstitute
themselves as a self-sufficient rural peasantry,
largely independent of external market forces
• Yeoman: Jeffersonian, then Northern
(Republican) ideal of independent farmer with
civic virtue; united interests of capital and labor
The sole ambition of the freedman at the present time appears to be to
become the owner of a little piece of land, there to erect an humble
home, and to dwell in peace and security at his own free will and
pleasure : if he wishes to cultivate the ground to cotton on his own
account, to be able to do so without any one to dictate to him hours or
systems of labor; if he wishes instead to plant corn or sorghum or sweet
potatoes, to be able to do that free from any outside control, — in one
word, to be free to control his own time and efforts without any thing
that can remind him of past sufferings in bondage.
A. Warren Kelsey, Orangeburg, S. C, Sept. 8, 1865.
“As northern investors understood the term, ‘free labor’ meant working
for wages on plantations; to blacks it meant farming their own land, and
living largely independent of the marketplace.”
Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, p. 54.
Presidential Reconstruction
• April 1865: reconstructed governments in LA, AK, TN
• Spring and summer 1865: Johnson hastily reorganizes
remaining CSA states (VA-Pierpont, NC-Holden)
• New constitutional conventions
– Repudiate ordinances of secession
– Abolish slavery
– Ratify 13th A
• Persistence of old law discriminating against free blacks
– Particularly denial of right to testify against whites
• Freedmen’s Bureau develops alternate court system
• November 1865: Congress gets ready to meet; stuff hits
the fan
The Freedmen’s Bureau
Establishing the Bureau
The Bureau
• Origins
– American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission (3/63)
– March 1865: Congresses establishes Bureau of Refugees,
Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands under War Department
– 1st and only Superintendent: Union General Oliver Otis
Howard
• The “Christian General”
• Bowdoin College
• Functions
– Relief
– Education
– Abandoned lands
Oliver Otis Howard (November 8, 1830 –
October 26, 1909) was a career United
States Army officer and a Union general in
the American Civil War. Known as the
"Christian general" because he tried to
base his policy decisions on his deep
religious piety, he was given charge of the
Freedmen's Bureau in mid 1865, with the
mission of integrating the freed slaves into
Southern society and politics during the
second phase of the Reconstruction Era.
Howard was born in Leeds, Maine, the son
of Rowland Bailey Howard and Eliza Otis
Howard. Rowland, a farmer, died when
Oliver was 9 years old. Oliver attended
Monmouth Academy in Monmouth, North
Yarmouth Academy in Yarmouth, Kents Hill
School in Readfield, and graduated from
Bowdoin College in 1850 at the age of 19.
He then attended the United States
Military Academy, graduating in 1854,
fourth in his class of 46 cadets
Final report of the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission to the Secretary of
War (May 1864)
The sum of our recommendations is this: Offer the freedmen temporary aid and
counsel until they become a little accustomed to their new sphere of life; secure to
them, by law, their just rights of person and property; relieve them, by a fair and
equal administration of justice, from the depressing influence of disgraceful
prejudice; above all, guard them against the virtual restoration of slavery in any
form, under any pretext, and then let them take care of themselves. If we do this,
the future of the African race in this country will be conducive to its prosperity and
associated with its well-being. There will be nothing connected with it to excite
regret or inspire apprehension.
Excerpts from The First Freedmen’s Bureau Act, 1865
The act establishing the Freedmen’s Bureau began life in March of 1864 as a bill in Congress to
establish a Bureau of Freedmen in the War Department. Debate in Congress swirled for a year,
with a plan for a permanent Bureau scuttled as too radical. Finally, in March of 1865, Congress
passed the following act, establishing a temporary agency with a general mandate to aid the
freedpeople.
An Act to establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees.
Be it enacted . . . That there is hereby established in the War Department, to continue during the
present war of rebellion, and for one year thereafter, a bureau of refugees, freedmen, and
abandoned lands, to which shall be committed, as hereinafter provided, the supervision and
management of all abandoned lands, and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and
freedmen from rebel states. . . .
The Secretary of War may direct such issues of provisions, clothing, and fuel, as he may deem
needful for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees
and freedmen and their wives and children, under such rules and regulations as he may direct.
The commissioner, under the direction of the President, shall have authority to set apart, for the
use of loyal refugees and freedmen, such tracts of land within the insurrectionary states as shall
have been abandoned, or to which the United States shall have acquired title by confiscation or
sale, or otherwise, and to every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman, as aforesaid, there
shall be assigned not more than forty acres of such land, and the person to whom it was so
assigned shall be protected in the use and enjoyment of the land for the term of three years. . . .
At the end of said term, or at any time during said term, the occupants of any parcels so assigned
may purchase the land and receive such title thereto as the United States can convey, upon
paying therefor the value of the land, as ascertained and fixed for the purpose of determining the
annual rent aforesaid.
APPROVED, March 3, 1865.
Source: U.S., Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations of the United States of America,
vol. 13 (Boston, 1866), pp. 507–509.
Excerpts from The Second Freedmen’s Bureau Act, 1866
It was a provision of the original act establishing the Freedmen’s Bureau that Congress would
have to renew the agency for it to continue functioning. By spring of 1866 it was clear that much
work remained to be done. The transition to free labor had just begun, and an economic
downturn was making the shift all the more challenging. In this climate, Congress began
debating the provisions under which the Freedmen’s Bureau Act would be renewed. Radical
Republicans in Congress sought to enlarge its powers considerably. Their proposal called for
making the Bureau a permanent fixture, strengthening its system of independent courts, and
providing for liberal homesteading by blacks—the oft-cited promise of “forty acres and a mule.”
To the shock of Congress, the conservative President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill, thus
causing dissent among Congressional Republicans and widening the already-present breach
between Johnson and Congress. The Republicans went back to the drawing board and recrafted
the bill. The Bureau’s life was extended for three years, and the homesteading provisions were
removed. This revised version of the bill passed over Johnson’s veto on July 16.
The act to establish a Bureau for the relief of Freedmen and Refugees . . . shall continue in force
for the term of two years from and after the passage of this act. . . .
The Secretary of War [may] issue such medical stores or other supplies and transportation and
afford such medical or other aid as may be needful . . . Provided, that no person shall be deemed
“destitute,” “suffering,” or “dependent upon the Government for support,” within the meaning of
this act, who is able to find employment, and could, by proper industry and exertion, avoid such
destitution, suffering, or dependency. . . .
(cont.)
The sales made to “heads of families of the African race,” under the instructions of President
Lincoln . . . are hereby confirmed and established; and all leases which have been made to such
“heads of families” . . . shall be changed into certificates of sale. . . .
The [Freedmen’s Bureau] Commissioner shall have power to seize, hold, use, lease, or sell all
buildings . . . formerly held under color of title by the late so-called Confederate States, and not
heretofore disposed of by the United States, . . . and to use the same or appropriate the proceeds
derived therefrom to the education of the freed people. . . .
In every State or district when the ordinary course of judicial proceedings has been interrupted
by the rebellion, . . . the right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give
evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to
have full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty, personal
security, and the acquisition, enjoyment, and disposition of estate, real and personal, including
the constitutional right to bear arms, shall be secured to and enjoyed by all the citizens of such
State or district without respect to race or color, or previous condition of slavery. . . .
Source: Acts and Resolutions, 39 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 191.
Excerpts from “Rules and Regulations for Assistant Commissioners,” 1865
General Oliver Otis Howard, head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, sent the following instructions to
his Assistant Commissioners in the South during the summer of 1865, just as the war was ending.
These regulations directed the work of Bureau agents throughout the South, though there was no
guarantee that individual agents would follow them to the letter. Just as important as revealing
the intended work of agents, the document illustrates the principles underlying the Bureau’s
efforts: racial justice, economic liberalism, and a swift end to government support.
Relief establishments will be discontinued as speedily as the cessation of hostilities and the
return of industrial pursuits will permit. Great discrimination will be observed in administering
relief, so as to include none that are not absolutely necessitous and destitute. Every effort will be
made to render the people self-supporting. Government supplies will only be temporarily issued
to enable destitute persons speedily to support themselves. . . .
In all places where there is an interruption of civil war, . . . the control of all subjects relating to
refugees and freedmen being committed to this bureau, the Assistant Commissioners will
adjudicate . . . all difficulties arising between negroes themselves, or between negroes and whites
or Indians. . . .
Negroes must be free to choose their own employers, and be paid for their labor. Agreements
should be free, bona fide [good faith] acts, approved by proper officers, and their inviolability
enforced on both parties. The old system of overseers, tending to compulsory unpaid labor and
acts of cruelty and oppression is prohibited.
Source: House Ex. Doc., no. 11, 39 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 45. In Walter Fleming, ed. Documentary
History of Reconstruction. Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1906, I, pp. 328–30.
Orestes Brown, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, "To the Freedmen of
Virginia," Richmond, Virginia, July 1, 1865
The Government and charity will aid you, but this assistance will be of little advantage unless you
help yourselves. To do this you must be industrious and frugal. You have now every inducement to
work, as you are to receive the payment for your labor, and you have every inducement to save your
wages, as your rights in what you possess will be protected....
While it is believed that most of you will feel the responsibilities of your new condition, and will
do all in your power to become independent of charity and of government aid, it is feared that some
will act from the mistaken notion that Freedom means liberty to be idle. This class of persons,
known to the law as vagrants, must at once, correct this mistake. They will not be allowed to live in
idleness when there is work to be had.
You are not to suppose that your former masters have become your enemies because you are
free. All good men among them will recognize your new relations to them as free laborers; and as
you prove yourselves honest, industrious and frugal, you will receive from them kindness and
consideration. If others fail to recognize your right to equal freedom with white persons, you will
find the Government, through the agents of this Bureau, as ready to secure to you, as to them,
Liberty and Justice....
In the new career before you, each one must feel the great responsibility that rests upon himself,
in shaping the destinies of his race. The special care that the Goverment now exercises over you as a
people, will soon be withdrawn, and you will be left to work and provide for yourselves....
Be quiet, peaceable, law abiding citizens. Be industrious, be frugal, and the glory of passing
successfuly from Slavery to Freedom, will, by the blessing of God, be yours.
Freedman’s Bureau officers, who were often taken from the ranks of military officials, were charged with
reconstructing the plantation regime by negotiating between planters and the freedpeople
Office of the Freedmen's Bureau, Memphis, Tennessee. (1866) From Harper's weekly : a
journal of civilization. (New York: Harper' s Weekly Co., 1857-1916).
Certificate from the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, uniting in
marriage B. B. Manson and Sarah Ann Bo, as having been common-law husband and wife
since 1843. Lebanon, Wilson County, Tennessee,
Bureau timeline
• March 1865: Bureau established by Congress
• 1866: Bill to renew Bureau and expand purview
–
–
–
–
–
passes Congress
Johnson vetoes
Congress rewrites
Johnson’s second veto
Congress overrides veto
• July 1869: Bureau discontinued except for
educational activities
• 1872: Bureau abolished
The Freedmen’s Bureau
Critics
Johnson’s opposition to renewing the FB Bill
• First Veto:
– 1. Johnson was opposed to the use of the military during
peacetime.
– 2. Johnson felt the Bill was a Federal encroachment into state
matters.
– 3. Johnson felt this was "class legislation" for a particular
segment of society that:
• a. Would keep the ex-slaves from being self-sustaining, and
b. Had not been done for struggling whites (like he had been as an exapprentice).
– 4. Johnson did not feel that Congress should be making these
decisions for unrepresented states.
• Second veto:
– Johnson's second objections were the same as his first.
Veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill
Andrew Johnson
February 19, 1866
the bill before me contains provisions which, in my opinion, are not warranted by the
Constitution and are not well suited to accomplish the end in view. The bill proposes to
establish by authority of Congress military jurisdiction over all parts of the United States
containing refugees and freedmen. It would, by its very nature, apply with the most
force to those parts of the United States in which the freedmen most abound; and it
expressly extends the existing temporary jurisdiction of the Freedmen's Bureau, with
greatly enlarged powers, over those States in which the ordinary course of judicial
proceedings has been interrupted by the rebellion. The source from which this military
jurisdiction is to emanate is none other than the President of the United States, acting
through the War Department and the Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau.
Veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill
Andrew Johnson
February 19, 1866
The exercise of power over which there is no legal supervision, by so vast a number of
agents as is contemplated by the bill, must, by the very nature of man, be attended by
acts of caprice, injustice, and passion. The trials having their origin under this bill are to
take place without the intervention of a jury and without any fixed rules of law or
evidence. . . . I cannot reconcile a system of military jurisdiction of this kind with the
words of the Constitution, which declare that "no person shall be held to answer for a
capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand
jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces or in the militia when in actual
service in time of war or public danger; and that "in all criminal prosecutions the
accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the State
or district wherein the crime shall have been committed."
Veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill
Andrew Johnson
February 19, 1866
The power that would be thus placed in the hands of the President, is such as in time of
peace certainly ought never to be intrusted to any one man. If it be asked whether the
creation of such a tribunal within a State is warranted as a measure of war, the question
immediately presents itself, whether we are still engaged in war. Let us not
unnecessarily disturb the commerce and credit and industry of the country, by declaring
to the American people and the world that the United States are still in a condition of
civil war. At present there is no part of our country in which the authority of the United
States is disputed. Offences that may be committed by individuals should not work a
forfeiture of the rights if the same communities. The country has entered or is returning
to a state of peace and industry, and the rebellion is in fact at an end. The measure,
therefore, seems to be as inconsistent with the actual condition of the country as it is at
variance with the Constitution of the United States.
Source: Andrew Johnson, His Life and Speeches by Lillian Foster, New York: Richardson &
Co., 1866.
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1940
Excerpts from the testimony before Congress of J. D. B. DeBow, 1866
J. D. B. De Bow was a wealthy and prominent southerner who lived through the Civil War years.
He published DeBow’s Review, an influential journal, out of New Orleans, Louisiana. DeBow’s
Review offered a conservative slant on the problems of Reconstruction, often echoing the
paternalism of the southern white elite. DeBow offered the following testimony before Congress
in 1866.
I think if the whole regulation of the negroes, or freedmen, were left to the people of the
communities in which they live, it will be administered for the best interest of the negroes as well
as of the white men. I think there is a kindly feeling on the part of the planters towards the
freedmen. They are not held at all responsible for anything that has happened. They are looked
upon as the innocent cause.
In talking with a number of planters, I remember some of them telling me they were succeeding
very well with their freedmen, having got a preacher to preach to them and a teacher to teach
them, believing it was for the interest of the planter to make the negro feel reconciled; for, to lose
his services as a laborer for even a few months would be very disastrous. The sentiment
prevailing is, that it is for the interest of the employer to teach the negro, to educate his children,
to provide a preacher for him, and to attend to his physical wants. . . .
The Freedmen’s Bureau, or any agency to interfere between the freedman and his former master,
is only productive of mischief. There are constant appeals from one to the other and continual
annoyances. It has a tendency to create dissatisfaction and disaffection on the part of the laborer,
and is in every respect in its result most unfavorable to the system of industry that is now being
organized under the new order of things in the South.
Source: Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, part iv, p. 134.
Excerpts from a report by Confederate General Wade Hampton to President Andrew Johnson, 1866
A Confederate cavalry officer and later general, Wade Hampton (1818–1902) was one of South
Carolina’s most prominent planters. He ran for Governor of South Carolina and lost a close
election to James Lawrence Orr in 1865. At the end of the Radical phase of Reconstruction, in
1876, he ran again as a Democrat, against incumbent Republican Daniel Chamberlain. The
election was so close that South Carolina had two governors for a short time, until President
Ulysses S. Grant withdrew Federal troops from South Carolina, thus conceding the election to
Hampton, and ending Reconstruction in South Carolina. Hampton prepared the following
report of conditions in the South for President Andrew Johnson in 1866.
The strong but paternal hand which had controlled him [i.e., “the negro”] through centuries of
slavery, having been suddenly and rudely withdrawn, the only hope of rendering him either
useful, industrious or harmless, was to elevate him in the scale of civilization, and to make him
appreciate not only the blessings, but the duties of freedom. This was the prevalent . . . sentiment
of the South. . . .
That much more had not been done to carry this sentiment into effect is due solely to the
pernicious and mischievous inference of that most vicious institution, the Freedmen’s Bureau. . .
. The whole machinery of this bureau has been used by the basest men, for the purpose of
swindling the negro, plundering the white man and defrauding the Government.
There may be an honest man connected with the Bureau, but I fear that the commissioners sent
by your Excellency to probe the rottenness of this cancer will find their search for such as
fruitless as was that of the Cynic of old. The report of these Commissioners furnishes ample
justification for the ill-will, the distrust, and the contempt with which the people of the South
regard this baleful and pernicious institution.
Source: Wade Hampton to Andrew Johnson, 1866, in Walter Fleming, ed. Documentary History of Reconstruction. Cleveland:
Arthur H. Clark, 1906, I, pp. 368–69.
Excerpts from the testimony before Congress of Daniel Taylor, an Alabama planter, 1871
In 1871, Congress began an intensive investigation into the activities of the Ku Klux Klan
throughout the South. Concerned that the Klan was denying freedpeople their civil rights,
Republicans in Congress heard testimony from hundreds of southerners, white and black,
conservative and radical. The resulting transcripts offer a wealth of information on southern life
during the Reconstruction. The following testimony of an Alabama planter named Daniel Taylor
offers insights into the ways the Freedmen’s Bureau was perceived by many southern white
planters.
The negroes that would go and settle down on plantations and work and stay there always had
plenty to eat. The white men who employed them felt bound to keep them in plenty to eat and
good clothes to wear when they would stay with them.
But if a man was trying to make a negro work, and talked a little short to the negro, he [the
negro] would pick up and go somewhere else. . . . The negroes would quit and go off for this
Bureau when they should have had a dependence in the country. They depended upon the Bureau
for their rations. . . .
The negroes cheated the farmers out of their labor. . . . The negroes were to pay for their
provisions out of their part of the crop and they did not go on making their crop, so that their part
of the crop was not sufficient to pay the owner the amount that was due him for the land and
stock and the advance.
Source: Ku Klux Klan Report, Alabama Testimony (1871), p. 1132.