DOCUMENTS RELATING TO RECONSTRUCTION EDITED BY Walter L. FLEMING, PH. D., The following numbers have been issued: No. 1. The Constitution and Ritual of the Knights of the White Camelia. Single number, 32 pages; price, 15 cents. No. 2. The Revised and Amended Prescript of Ku Klux Klan. Single number, 82 pages, price, 15 cents. No. 3. Union League Documents. Single number, 32 pages, price 15 cents. (2) The Constitution of the Council of Safety. Double number, 64 pages; price, 30 cents. Nos. 6 & 7. (1) Freedmen's Bureau Documents. (2) Freedmen's Savings Bank Double number, 64 pages; price 30 cents. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION, EIGHT NUMBERS, ONE DOLLAR The Freedmen's Bureau The Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands was created by an act of Congress, approved March 3, 1865. On July 16, 1866, a supplementary act passed over the President's veto extended the Bureau for two years. July 6, 1868, a third act extended it for one more year in the unreconstructed states. A fourth act, on July 25, 1868, provided for the discontinuance of the Bureau after January 1, 1869, except as to the educational and bounty divisions. Finally, on June 10, 1872, an act abolished the Bureau after June 30, 1872, and turned its affairs over to the Secretary of War for setttlement. From 1861 to 1865 the Federal government had to provide in some way for the numerous blacks who crowded into the Union lines. The policies pursued were various and conflicting. Some commanders put the refugee negroes to work on fortifications or about the camps; others concentrated them in camps or colonies under the supervision of army officers, usually chaplains; all of them gave supplies to the negroes. The Treasury Department had control of property confiscated under the acts of Congress, and its agents employed freedmen to cultivate the plantations; many colonies of blacks were thus established. Numerous Freedmen's Aid Societies in the North cooperated with the government in looking after the negroes in the camps and colonies. There was in the War Department an unofficial "Department of Negro Affairs," which also attended to matters relating to negroes. Neither the War Department nor the Treasury was responsible for all that pertained to the blacks; first one and then the other seemed to be in control. Practically all of the camps, plantations, colonies, and communities failed because of incompetent and corrupt agents in charge. The Freedmen's Bureau Act transferred the entire control of the blacks to a bureau of the War Department. It was to attend to all maters relating to white Union refugees, confiscated property, and negroes. At the head of the Bureau was the Commissioner, General O. O. Howard, with an assistant commissioner in each state. In practice, the Bureau was independent of, or rather superior to, the military and provisional civil administration in the South; it was in reality a complete government with almost despotic powers over the 4,000,000 blacks of the South; it removed them entirely from the control of the civil government and subordinated the civil government to itself. Its principal legal activities were in relief work, education, regulation of labor, and administration of justice. In the relief work it spent about $2,000,000 for hospitals and dispensary service among the Freedmen; about $4,500,000 was expended for food and clothes, 21,000,000 rations being distributed; something more than $1,500,000 was expended in transporting 30,000 negroes, 4,000 white refugees, 4,000 teachers and missionaries, and 2,000 officials. Upon negro education the Bureau expended about $5,200,000, principally in aid of the schools established by benevolent societies from the North. The whole field of labor legislation was covered. The Bureau regulated contracts, wages, hours, rations, clothing, and quarters; it classified laborers and forbade certain kinds of work; it required medical attendance for laborers and education of negro children; certain methods of renting were forbidden. In all that related to labor the Bureau was supreme. The Bureau courts had jurisdiction over all cases that arose among the blacks or between black and whites. They enforced the regulation of the Bureau, supervised the civil courts from which cases relating to negroes were often removed and the decisions of which were often set aside. Civil officials obnoxious to the Bureau were removed by military authority. ac The income of the Bureau was derived from the sale of confiscated Confederate and private property, from fees, rents, taxes, bounty funds, gifts from individuals and associations, and from appropriations by Congress. The aggregate expenditure that may be counted for was about $20,000,000; in addition there were immense sums that were never carried on the books-probably $20,000,000 more-in Confederate property, gifts, fees, and bounty funds. Nearly 1,000,000 acres of land belonging to private individuals had to be restored, but not before much of it had been given, leased or sold to freedmen. As to the necessity for the Bureau opinions do not agree; it is generally agreed that it was not well administered and that the results of its work were too often not good. It was based on suspicion of the good faith of the whites and the presumption that whites and blacks were enemies. The higher officials were generally good men, some of the best being General Wager Swayne in Alabama, General J. S. Fullerton in Louisiana and District of Columbia, and General Schofield in Virginia. Others who stirred up strife between the races were Whittlesey of North Carolina, Chaplain T. W. Conway of Louisiana, T. W. Osborne of Florida, Scott in North Carolina, Fiske in Tennessee and Kentucky, and Sheridan in Louisiana. The superintendents and agents were generally inferior men-the hangers-on of the armies. The success or failure of the Bureau in a community depended on character of the agent in charge. Much the most important work accomplished by the Bureau was to relieve the destitute whites, Union and Confederate, in the poorer counties. In the white districts the destitution was general and much suffering was relieved. In the great majority of the black communities there was at the end of the war no destitution, and had the negroes stayed at home and worked there would have been little want, but the distribution of rations caused them to crowd into the towns, and much suffering and disease resulted. In the later years of the Bureau rations were used simply as a means of organizing a black political party. The labor regulations were, te arrit BUDE in theory but absurd in practice and the planters WHTE ICEL neglect or evade them, or cease to plant. The Bureau fra trying to regulate labor. Extravagant claims were made for Bitect schools, but in fact its principal work was to aid the bends & tablished by the benevolent societies from the Nort for dividuals. The 2,000 schools claimed were often only day benso a and few of any kind were wholly controlled by the Bureau education given the negro was not suited to his needs doctrines of social and political equality taught in some aroused the opposition of the whites. The principal regas os of the South have developed from some of the strz schools aided by the Bureau. The abuses in the adminis justice were flagrant, and the petty oppression practiest was *** Bureau hated by the whites. The negroes, as often as the *****, were cheated and blacked-mailed by the agents, Who were ofteK purchased by the planters. The effect on the state goverLICELL WAS to weaken and in places practically to destroy its administration From the begining the Bureau entered politics and used its in fluence to build up a radical party. The Bureau officials in their political activities formed the white membership of the Enios SAY, and carried into execution the Reconstruction Acts. ganization of the carpetbag government most Bureau of cured office, and the institution was discontinued. (1) (1) The only good account of the Boreas to 51 V Pierce, The Freedmen's Bureau, published by of Iowa. See also Garner's Reconstruction is Max.55 on conditions in the South contain much ***** 42,6 The Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company (99% 18 Bank) was a private institution but conducted proksiss of the Bureau. Well conducted it would have pro fit to the negroes; but the management was or wh and the enterprise failed after a few years, may losing their savings. (2) (2) On the Freedmen's Savings Pas |