sway of the ignorant and self-serving few rather than that of the people, for the latter, although more numerous, were counted disloyal because of past acts.

Our survey of these reconstruction administrations has shown uniform results. There have been different phases, but to the extent that reconstruction principles prevailed there has been uniformly a use of public office for private benefit. The negroes plundered the State in America with the same zeal with which they plundered a wrecked vessel on the coast of Africa, their new found leaders applauding and helping, while the victims stood helpless by.

What, then, is the outlook with which we close our review? All Southern States in 1874 were not in the same condition, but at least all had passed through like stages. We have found each ruled by a few men, although there might be conflicts between the would-be tyrants as to which should be supreme. These at first were uniformly white men, although in some places, as in South Carolina, Louisiana and Mississippi, the negro was rapidly coming to his own, or rather to the white man's own, and securing the chief offices. For the negro himself the result was disastrous. Instead of self-reliance, instead of independent development of all that was in him for his own good and in order to make him indispensable to his community, the negro was taught dependence and inoculated with the notion that he was not only a national ward, like the Indian, but himself was of a favored race, for whom offices must be preserved to the exclusion of the southern whites; and this belief might become so ingrained, that, even if State positions should fail him in the future, it might survive as to offices within the gift of a paternal government at Washington. He came to insist on what he imagined were his rights and to forget his duties.

Some States had been redeemed. Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Arkansas could from a hardly won height look back in sympathy. Alabama, Mississippi and Texas might almost hope for the promise of a new future. But

South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana seemed doomed. Credit was ruined. The prevailing feeling of all those who made the State worth being called a State was depression if not despair. The negroes were in the majority and the future did not promise any change. The employment of force was useless, for, when outbreaks occurred, they were crushed by Federal troops. The result could not be other than a hatred by the whites of both the negro and his new master. If there was to be a future for the South, the determination, springing originally out of race pride and now confirmed by bitter experience, was in every State that in the government there was room only for white men.

CHAPTER XV

the freedMEN'S BUREAU AND ITS ADJUNCTS

THE negro was the cause of the Civil War and the subject of the three amendments to the Constitution which marked the reorganization of the Union. It is true that emancipation had not at first been contemplated, but it became the fixed policy of the Federal government even during the progress of hostilities, and the extension of suffrage to the negroes became not less the policy afterwards, for it was the foundation of Reconstruction. So that during the progress of the war and for years later the negro was in some sense the ward of the nation. The great mass of the American people desired his welfare, and the feeling took practical shape. On the part of the government it was to be effected by the Freedmen's Bureau, reënforced on the unofficial side by the Union League in political and the Freedmen's Bank in financial training of the "blameless Ethiopian."

The earlier history and procedure of the Freedmen's Bureau has been mentioned in other connections, but on account of the important part played by this institution its fuller development should also be studied. As an experiment in governmental control of racial and economic affairs during an important crisis, it probably has no parallel in history.

The bureau ultimately had greater powers than at first, but at the beginning its work was arranged in four divisions,

-lands, records, finance, and medical service, each with appropriate officers. Lieutenant Colonel Balloch was chief distributing officer, and J. W. Alvord had charge of schools and finances, while there were also quartermasters, inspectors, provost marshals, missionaries, and local agents without number. All were subject to the general office at Washington, from which orders proceeded, and for better administration all officers were under military jurisdiction, although some were civilians.

The whole subject was new and much had to be learned by experience. For this reason the instructions first given by Commissioner O. O. Howard were general and provisional, and the assistant commissioners left to work out details applicable to their different jurisdictions. Some of these acted with wisdom and circumspection, and some succeeded to a large degree in enlisting the favor of the State authorities. This was the case with Swayne in Alabama, Tillson in Georgia, Osborn in Florida and Sprague in Arkansas. Most of the complaints were directed against local agents, many of whom were not even known to the assistant commissioners, some were strangers in their districts, and not a few abused their position and influence over the negroes to their own personal ends.

There was much legislation on the subject of the Freedmen's Bureau, all of which contemplated it as a temporary institution, designed to discharge certain duties as to the freedmen until the Southern States were reorganized to the extent of properly discharging these duties. The first act was passed July 2, 1864, and, even before the two years contemplated by it had expired, the Republican leaders, Trumbull in particular, endeavored to secure another law extending the term and widening the scope of the institution. President Johnson vetoed this bill and enough votes could not be mustered to override the veto. In the progress of the quarrel between the president and Congress, however, another act along almost the same lines was passed, continuing the bureau for the relief of the freedmen and