The story of the Freedmen's Bureau is an important part of the history of Reconstruction. The two principle historiographic schools on Reconstruction(1) both err in overemphasizing the threat to Southern white supremacy posed by the Freedmen's Bureau. In the first half of this century, the influence of William Dunning on historical writing on Reconstruction was pervasive. Dunning-school historians saw Congressional Reconstruction as oppressive towards the white population of the South and as a series of disruptive intrusions by Northern radicals into Southern racial relations. The military presence in the South was presented as a harsh occupying force, with excessively radical federal institutions like the Freedmen's Bureau contributing to the suffering of whites under military rule. The agents of the Freedmen's Bureau were depicted as radical "emissaries of abolition" and a scourge on Southern white society. This very negative portrayal of the Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction in general filtered down from more academic historical writing into the popular consciousness through such book as Claude Bower's The Tragic Era and D.W. Griffith's film The Birth of the Nation.(2)
In the middle of this century, revisionist historians sympathetic to the Civil Rights movement came to question the Dunning-school view of Reconstruction.(3) The revisionists accepted the Dunning-school depiction of the Freedmen's Bureau as a radical and disruptive organization aiming to utterly change Southern life, but differed from the Dunning tradition in seeing these aspects of the Bureau as highly positive. According to the revisionist view, the short life of the Bureau is to be lamented as part of the larger failure of Congressional Reconstruction; the period after 1865 was a missed opportunity to achieve racial equality.
The depiction of the Bureau as a radical institution intent on refashioning Southern society is extremely problematic.(4) While the Bureau had been created by Congress, it was nevertheless part of the executive branch of government and therefore subordinate to the President, who for most of the Bureau's short-life was Andrew Johnson, a Southerner who sympathized with the former slave-holders and wanted to "reconstruct" the South by restoring the power of whites. Johnson was opposed to continuing the existence of the Bureau, yet as long as it was still in existence, Johnson did not hesitate to exert influence over the Bureau and its policies.(5)
This made the Bureau even less of a radical organization than it would have been otherwise.
The Bureau was organized in a decentralized way, with the South being partitioned into large districts that were in turn subdivided. Because of its decentralized structure, Bureau policy varied widely from locality to locality and state to state and depended on a number of factors, including wartime promises made to local blacks and the attitudes of local agents. This variation makes generalization about the Bureau's effects on Southern society difficult, but the evidence suggests that the treatment of blacks at the hands on individual officers ranged from patronizing helpfulness to bias in favour of former slave-holders to physical and sexual abuse. Aside from the mistreatment of individual blacks, the Freedmen's Bureau had a conservative effect on Southern society, helping to perpetuate the domination of whites over blacks.
The Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Property, commonly called the Freedmen's Bureau, was the product of the exigencies of war time. Even before the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, slaves had flocked to Union camps seeking freedom. Until the final status of these "contrabands" could be resolved, policy in regards to contraband slaves was confused and varied widely from commander to commander. While some Union officers were dedicated abolitionists and welcomed this chance to liberate slaves, others approached this issue more cautiously as there were property rights involved. Some officers even allowed slave-holders to visit their camps to retrieve escaped slaves. Others put the contrabands on rations and employed them in building fortifications.(6) As Union forces progressed into Confederate territory, they captured many plantations where the whites had fled leaving the slaves alone. It was the policy of the Union government that any person who was voluntarily absent from their property in the service of the Confederacy forfeited all their property. In the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia the problem was especially acute, as many plantations had been overrun early in the war by General Sherman's forces. Treasury department officials were dispatched to supervise these plantations and make sure a cotton crop was produced. General Sherman granted "possesory title" for the duration of the war to the ex-slaves living there, who sub-divided plantations into roughly forty-acre plots. Officers and other government agents cooperated with private organizations such as the American Missionary Association and the Emancipation League in providing material aid and educational services to the newly freed slaves.(7)
In 1863, a bill was tabled in Congress to establish a single Bureau within the War Department to deal with the affairs of freedmen and other people of African ancestry. Objections to this proposal included the principle of states' rights as "the matters dealt with were not proper subjects for national legislation" [and] that it was unconstitutional for Congress "to tax citizens of one state for the support of the indigent freedmen of another."(8) Another objection was that such a Bureau would replace the slavery of blacks to private individuals with "vassalage" to the national government.(9) Proponents of the measure defended the Bureau's "constitutionality" by arguing that the Bureau was an integral part of the nation's war effort, which was a matter of federal jurisdiction.(10) Presenting the Bureau as a war-time measure helped to overcome constitutional objections, but this argument would have ramifications for post-war arguments about continuing the existence of the Bureau.
Because of disputes over issues of federal versus state power and the question of whether the Bureau should be under the Treasury or the War Department, the legislation creating the Freedmen's Bureau was not signed into law by Lincoln until March 1865.(11) Before his assassination, Lincoln had selected General Oliver O. Howard as Commissioner of the Bureau. While he had never been an abolitionist, Howard was strong advocate of temperance and other social reform movements and had spent much time in the South before the war. President Johnson confirmed Howard's appointment to the position soon after Lincoln's death.
Howard believed that the freedmen should be given formal, legal equality without social equality: "I never advocated equality except by law & justice."(12)
Howard divided the former Confederate states into ten districts, an officer with the rank of colonel or higher generally commanding a district. Each district was further divided into subdistricts that might include several counties.(13) Superintendents and other local agents were generally army officers already stationed in the area because Congress had not provided any funds to pay the salaries of Bureau agents; the army officers continued to draw their military pay while working for the Bureau.(14) In addition to territorial divisions within the Bureau, there were four major functional divisions as well: land, labour contracts and schools, financial affairs, and a medical service.(15) These functional divisions reflected the major responsibilities of a typical Bureau agent. Associated with the Bureau but independent of it was the Freedmen's Savings Bank, whose collapse due to mismanagement cost many blacks their life savings.(16)
The legislation establishing the Freedmen's Bureau in 1865 had stated that the Bureau would exist as long as the war continued "and for one year thereafter."(17) After Appomattox, some in Congress felt the need to extend the existence of the Bureau. Now that the war-time exigencies were less pressing, some in Congress redoubled their attack on the Bureau, saying that it "proposed to establish a cruel despotism within a republic."(18) President Johnson echoed these constitutional objections in his reasons for vetoing the bill extending the life of the Bureau. Among other criticism of the Bureau, the President stated that it established military jurisdiction over the United States, established "arbitrary tribunals" without juries, and that it was unconstitutional to tax states not represented in Congress. A new bill was written providing for a two-year extension to the life of the Bureau, which was passed by Congress over the veto of the President, with whom relations were rapidly deteriorating. Eventually, the Bureau's life was extended to July 1869. However, some of the activities of the Bureau, such as hospitals, were continued as late as 1872.
One of the issues that was settled earliest in the history of the Bureau's existence was the debate over the redistribution of land from slave-holder to freedmen. Throughout the South, there was the widespread expectation among the freedmen that there would be a massive redistribution of land, with the confiscated plantations of the whites being subdivided into family farms sufficient to support each black family. The electrifying idea of "forty acres and a mule" ran throughout the South for several years, according to one Northern magazine, "the sole ambition of the freedmen at this present time appears to become the owner of his little piece of land."(19) Several factors encouraged the freedmen to equate personal emancipation with land-ownership. Most obviously, their owners had fled the plantations, which they had owned along with the slaves dwelling upon it. Moreover, some Union Generals had embarked on what appeared to be permanent land-reform programs in various areas of the South. Legislation of July 1862 permitted the military to seize the land of rebels and apply it to military purposes. It was under the auspices of this legislation that General Sherman issued his famous Special Field Order Number 15 in January 1865, whereby freedmen in the Sea Islands and nearby coastal areas were to be assigned forty acres parcels of land with "possesory title" until Congress could settle the land issue permanently. Because this action had been motivated by a desire to "relieve his army of the encumbering hordes of freedmen"(20) some have characterized Sherman as establishing a vast "poor-farm."(21) A radical minority in Congress also advocated such a redistribution, arguing that democracy would be a theoretical reality only in an area where land was held by only a few.
In framing the 1862 legislation, Congress showed its respect for the rights of property in that it permitted the confiscation of land owned by rebels only during the life-time of the individual rebel. Upon his death, the land in question was to be turned over to his legal heirs. This provision of the legislation showed that even during the darkest hours of the war, the Republican majority in Congress showed consider respect for the rights of property of Confederate rebels, a respect which after the war would doom proposals for significant land reform. The original version of the 1865 bill establishing the Freedmen's Bureau had provided for a degree of land reform by providing that freedmen should receive forty acre lots for a period of three years while paying rent. However, this provision never became law.(22) In discussing the controversies over the land restoration policies of the Freedmen's Bureau, we should not lose sight of the fact that the amount of land that came into the possession of the Freedmen's Bureau was never large, as "only two-tenths of one per cent of the land in the insurrectionary states was ever held by the bureau."(23) Moreover, at any given time, a portion of this land had been leased to white individuals in order to keep it in cultivation, and respect for property being paramount, the Bureau took the position that "these leases must be respected."(24) The discussion of land reform was, however, interpreted by many freedmen that they would receive permanent grants of land that had been confiscated from their former masters. Many blacks were excited at the war's end about the land they were certain would soon be theirs.
Over the period of the next few years, the freedmen came to realize that they would not receive the land they had hoped for. In the years following the war, the title of the old slave-holders to their land became more secure and it could be seen with increasing clarity that there would not be a massive redistribution of land in the South. However, the retreat from land reform occurred at a different pace and in different way in various Southern states. Conditions varied widely throughout the Southern states and this dictated the way in which local Bureau agents sought to adjust the expectations of blacks. The war had decided that slaves were an illegitimate form of property, but the respect American's felt for other forms of property, including land, remained strong. In discussing land policy in the South, one New York Congressman declared that "all confiscation is robbery. It is the tool of the tyrant and the oppressor." At the same time, the New York Sun argued against land redistribution in the South because "a war on property 'would not be confined to the South.""(25)
The war-time process of land reform had gone furthest in South Carolina's Sea Islands, which had been under occupation by Union forces since 1861. Because freedmen had already divided the plantations among themselves and were farming independently, the situation here was most complex. When President Johnson issued a broad amnesty proclamation for former Confederates in May 1865, he laid the legal foundation for the restoration of property to former slave-holders. On the coastal mainland of South Carolina, restoration was well under way by the begginng of 1866, with much confiscated property returned to its owners.(26)
On the Sea Islands, restoration proceeded more slowly because the possesory title given to the freed islanders conferred a special status on the land there; the freedmen had official certificates giving them a vague sort of title to the land, which complicating matters. General Howard, head of the Bureau, went to the Sea Islands to make a personal appeal to the freedmen to accept the fact of land restoration and to work with their old owners as employees. In his travels throughout the South, General Howard articulated the philosophy that blacks should consolidate their formal, legal equality before embarking upon demands for land redistribution. Addressing a black audience, Howard said "let us put down our pins and hold on to what we have and be sure we have got it before we try to push ahead any further." (27) The blacks in the audience were not receptive to this idea. Howard's South Carolina deputy, Rufus Saxton, suggested in his 1866 report to Congress that the government offer to purchase the disputed Sea Island lands from the whites. Respectful of the rights of property, his plan stipulated that if the white land-owners refused, money should be given to the freedmen to purchase equivalent land elsewhere. There was some discussion in Northern journals of the compensated expropriating of plantations which would then be turned over to freedmen, with considerable attention being paid to the compensation that accompanied the abolition of serfdom in Russia in 1864.(28) Compensated expropiation under the government's traditional right of eminent domain would have respected the property rights of whites, but the idea of expending tax dollars to purchase land that would be then handed to freedmen was anathema to the small-government ideology the prevailed in the Republican and Democratic parties. Congress paid little attention to this proposal.(29)
On January 1 1866, the commander of the Bureau's South Carolina district announced that unless freedmen negotiated a labour contract to work for a planter within ten days, they would be evicted from their homes. Somewhat later, another policy was developed to deal with the recalcitrant Sea Island freedmen, suggesting that the New Year's Day threat was at least partially unsuccessful. Under the new policy, land-owners who had been pardoned were allowed to return to their plantations but must respect possesory titles given to freedmen. However, the white land-owners were entitled to consolidate the freedmen's plots into one area. Somewhat contradictorily, if a freedman had claimed a forty-acre plot different from that specified in the possesory title, the land reverted to the white owner. Very often this was the case, so a majority of Sea Island freedmen lost any title to land.(30) By the end of 1866, only 1,565 freedmen families still had legally valid claims to land on the Sea Islands. The next year, these title-holders were offered the choice to exchange their possesory titles to permanent grants to vacant land in a nearby area. Most elected to move. By the end of 1867, most of the Sea Islands were owned by whites once again. Even in this area where special circumstances favoured blacks, relatively few freedmen became owners of the land which they worked. Most were reduced to the status of contract laborers.(31)
In other parts of the South, land redistribution was even less of a possibility. In Kentucky, the fact that the state had remained part of the Union meant that there were few confiscated properties that could have been divided among blacks even if the government had not been opposed to this practice. Here the transition from slavery to wage labour (which the Bureau endorsed) and to sharecropping (which it opposed) was uninterrupted by disputes over land title.(32)
In Arkansas, the freedmen were described by one Bureau agent as "very anxious to acquire property." In Little Rock in 1865, an officer reported that "the freedmen of this district are very anxious to get land of their own to work next year." (33) During the war, land had been temporarily taken over by the government and worked by freed slaves. However, both during Presidential Reconstruction and during the more radical Congressional Reconstruction, no large-scale efforts were made in Arkansas to confiscate the land of former slave-holders and give it to the slaves who had worked it. In Missippi, Davis Bend, the plantation owned by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, was confiscated and given to the slaves who worked upon it, who successfully produced large crops of cotton.(34) However, an estate belonging to Jefferson Davis was an exceptional case, as such a senior rebel was unlikely to be pardoned soon and return to claim his property. The overwhelming majority of plantations were owned by lower-ranking supporters of the Confederacy and were soon returned to their owners under Johnson's amnesty program.
In Louisiana, Union troops had occupied territory for most of the war. 1862, New Orleans had been occupied and whites had be offered a choice: either swear and oath of allegiance to the Union or lose all property. "Many citizens who despised the Yankees rushed to take the oath as a necessary expedient to save their property"(35) and as a result the pool of property that could have been confiscated and distributed was significantly reduced. Confiscated plantations were leased in order to provide revenue, and only a minority were given to freedmen to farm. In 1865, most of the land leased to freedmen was returned to the original owner, but with the blacks entitled to work the land until the end of their leases. By 1873 even the lands of the most prominent Confederate leaders had been returned either to them personally or to their heirs.(36)
By the end of 1866 it was increasingly clear that, with a few exceptions, confiscated plantations were to be returned to their owners. If land would not be confiscated and distributed to the freedmen, there were only two other ways in which blacks could be helped to achieve land-ownership: African colonization and homesteading. Both of these alternatives avoided the sensitive issue of property rights. African colonization had long appealed to people who wanted to get rid of America's black population, but only about 2,500 freedmen moved to Liberia between 1865 and 1870.(37) A half-way measure between African colonization and homesteading in the West on the same terms as white pioneers was to colonize groups of blacks together somewhere in the United States. In 1865, it was proposed that southern Florida be turned into something resembling an Indian Reservation for blacks.(38) However, this proposal was unpopular and was stillborn. Homesteading either in the West or in sparsely populated parts of the south was the option endorsed by the Bureau. The 1862 Homestead Act provided for settlers to obtain 160 acres of public land, with full title being given after five years of cultivation. In 1866, the Southern Homestead Act was passed by Congress, opening federal lands in that area to people of all races.
Public lands in Alabama, Missippi, Missouri, and Florida became open to homesteaders. However, while blacks were legally free to take up land, several factors limited their practical ability to do so. While some assistance was provided to freedmen in terms of transportation to homesteading areas, "want of teams and farming implements" doomed most efforts to become self-sufficient to failure. Likely because they had fewer resources with which to begin homesteading, blacks were more likely than whites to fail at homesteading. In Arkansas, about 26,000 claims for land were made under the Southern Homestead Act. In 44 per cent of claims, the claimants succeeded in farming their claim for the period required for full ownership to be granted. Black homesteads were less successful, with only 25 per cent of homesteading freedmen reaching the five-years occupancy threshold. Moreover, of the 26,000 claims for land made in Arkansas, only about 1,000 were made by blacks, a far smaller share than the state's population would have entitled them to. Of the 110,000 freedmen in Arkansas, only about 250 families became independent farmers through homesteading on public lands.(39)
Recognizing that lack of resources to get started played a role in discouraging blacks from homesteading, Frederick Douglas suggested that the government provide loans to freedmen to aid them in becoming independent, but this proposal was "apparently too radical for adaptation by most of the political leaders."(40) Aside from providing some transportation, the extent of the Bureau's assistance to blacks seeking to homestead was establishing a land office in New Orleans. At the same time, the "radical" Congress passed laws that tended to keep freedmen homesteaders in the South rather than migrating to the North and West; "homesteading for Negroes was to be kept in the South." (41) Southern Democrats enjoyed seeing Republicans in teh Norh and West
made uneasy by the prospect of blacks settling in the West, which they saw as "their section of the country."(42)
The restoration of lands to former slave-holders and the lack of support for blacks who wished to homestead meant that few freedmen would be able to achieve land-ownership. As a result, they would continue to work for whites, not as slaves as formerly but under a new labour system. However, what the labour system would be was unclear. Sharecropping, payment in cash, payment in goods, and apprenticeship all existed in the South in the years after 1865. Bureau agents played a crucial role in the development of these labour systems, and in examining the attitudes and practices of Bureau agents we can see that far from being radicals, their attitudes generally ranged from moderate sympathy for the freedmen to hostility to blacks. It would be unfair to suggest that any in the Bureau sought to actually establish black slavery. Bureau agents were committed to giving blacks this minimum and were often the first people to tell blacks in remote areas that they had been freed. The labour systems encouraged by the Bureau certainly were very different from slavery, but at the same time the did not challenge the fundamental relationship between whites and blacks.
Apprenticeship agreements were often made between planters and freedmen under Bureau supervision as a way of providing for the care of a child. In 1866, Kentucky passed a law that encouraged freed slaves to apprentice their children to former slave-holders. Many ex-slaves were unhappy with the conditions under which their apprenticed children were working and asked the Bureau to nullify the agreement and return the child. It was the Bureau's policy to do this only if the parent had contracted the apprenticeship under duress. If this had not occurred, the Bureau was satisfied and let the apprenticeship continue.(43)
A large portion of the Bureau's work in the South consisted of supervising the negotiating and signing of labour contracts between freedmen and former masters. "Freedom of contract" was an important part of nineteenth-century America's laissez-faire ideology. There was a tendency to emphasize the idea that contracts that were the product of mutual consented tended to benefit both parties. Faith in the power of the immutable laws of supply and demands was shared by many Americans at this time, including the leaders of the Freedmen's Bureau. Sharing in the "nineteenth-century faith in the mutuality implicit in a contractual obligation," General Howard and other Bureau leaders "directed their men to bring together southern planters and workers for the benefit of both."(44) This belief that maximum mutual benefit arises from any freely-negotiated contracted was current in the wider society as well. For instance, Hunt's Merchant Magazine in an optimistic 1865 article entitled "Capital and Labour in the South" stated that since contractual obligations had replaced involuntary labour in the South, labour-related questions were now settled. According to this commercial journal, the "labour question in the South will be satisfactorily arranged in due time, for the best interests of all concerned... like all other economical questions, it will be settled by... the interests of the parties." Under a free-labour system "labour questions" are "self-adjusting" in accordance with market forces, "the interests of the two races in the South will not long be antagonistic."(45)
Nineteenth-century Americans generally frowned upon government limitations on freedom on contract (such as minimum wages). As long as both parties entered into a contract through their own free-will, it was a legitimate agreement and must be upheld by the state no matter what its provisions. This philosophy animated the agents of the Bureau. Contracts that had been entered into because of fear of force or because of deception and trickery were illegal and that was what the Bureau was there to prevent. Freedmen unfamiliar with contracts and lacking in education needed temporary protection in this regard more than other Americans. Aside from ensuring that contracts were not coerced or fraudulent, the Bureau's involvement in contracts was limited, being more concerned that the correct procedure was followed in draft contracts rather than in the substance of the labour agreements. The Bureau's encouragement on contracts confirmed the status of the freedmen as free individuals with the right to make contracts, but at the same time it introduced a new form of subordination in the South. Urging blacks to make contracts with former slave-holders "restored to Southern white men... their ancient prerogative of determining the rules by which they and their Negroes were to live."(46)
General Howard, head of the Bureau, was opposed to the establishment of minimum wages for freedmen; his view on wages was that "it is better to let them be regulated by demand."(47) Similarly, conditions that were reminiscent of slavery were included in contracts that were then approved by Bureau agents who felt that it was acceptable for blacks to contract to submit to whippings as long as they made the contract voluntarily.(48) While this was an extreme example of how far the principle of freedom of contract could be stretched in support of teh restoration of teh white supremacy, many contracts were very severe to the freedmen, restricting their ability to leave the plantation without permission or to keep guns.(49)
Bureau agents often took a narrowly legalistic view of what constituted a "fair" contract. Major John William De Forrest was a Bureau agent in South Carolina who described his experiences in articles in Harper's Magazine, often presenting anecdotes about the freedmen for the amusement of Northern readers. He recounts how he spent an entire morning attempting to convince an elderly freedman and his wife that they had not be cheated by their employer. The conditions of the contract to which they had agreed resulted in the couple finishing their year od employment without receiving any money from their employer for their services. The planter showed De Forrest his "admirably kept books" which listed the couple's productivity, credits, and debts to the planter, proving that they were not entitled to any money. What is striking about De Forrest's account of this incidentent is that he manifests little sympathy for the blacks or understanding of their perspective. The fact that the couple persisted in thinking they were owed money as something the reader is supposed to find amusing. Taking a strictly legalistic view of teh situation, De Forrest upheld the position of the planter. Bureau agents generally charged for their services in supervising contracts, the fees charged to clients sometimes occasioning significant protest.
In the other writings of De Forrest, we gain further insight into the attitudes of a Bureau agent towards the freedmen and Southern society generally. De Forrest was very conscious of class divisions within the white population of the South and was broadly sympathetic to the plight of "the gentry, the educated, the socially influential, the class which before the war governed the South, the class that may soon govern it again." De Forrest asked the readers of Harper's Magazine to "imagine the wrath of a fine gentleman, once the representative of his country above, who finds himself driven to open a beer salon." De Forrest sentimentally describes a child whose inherited estate in the Sea Islands was divided among freedmen, "I believe that it is unnatural not to sympathize with this little plundered princess." Playing on the stereotypes and preferences of his Northern readers, De Forrest begins his account of the condition of the dispossessed Southern gentry with a description of "a blonde, blue-eyed girl with cheeks of faint rose." (50)
Given De Forest's sympathies for the former slave-holding class, it is not surprising that he associated socially with members of that class, finding in South Carolina "a general air of hospitality that included numerous invitations to breakfasts, dinners, teas, and picnics."(51) De Forest had been a published novelist before the war, so one might expect that his experience was exceptional. However, other Bureau agents were reprimanded by their superiors for "hobnobbing" with the whites, which was felt would distance the agent from the freedmen they were supposed to serve.(52) On the other hand, there were occasional instances where white hostility reached a level where a Bureau agent needed the protection of troops. However, "instances such as these were highly exceptional."(53) For the most part, white Southerners made only verbal attacks on the Bureau. Moreover, whites distinguished between the Bureau as an institution, which they disliked, and the individual agent, as "whites within a given community often found the individual agent a respectable and even likeable human being." The Assistant Commissioner for South Carolina, General Robert K. Scott was liked by the whites of the state far more than his more radical predecessor, the Charleston Daily News felt that under his command, the Bureau in the state had become "tolerable, and by contrast most agreeable."(54)
Some Bureau officials even operated plantations while working for the Bureau, which tended to result in their neglecting their official duties, a profitable sideline not officially forbidden. Conflict of interests sometimes arose from this practice; when investigated, a Bureau assistant commissioner in South Carolina was found to have funnelled Bureau-owned rations and supplies to his personal plantation operations. This was only "the most notorious case."(55) Having Bureau agents operate plantations worked by freedmen on a sharecropping basis was especially problematic because their official duties involved supervising contracts between planters and freedmen. Moreover, becoming a planter oneself would have likely strengthened any sympathy one had felt to the former slave-holding planters as a class.
The agents of the Freedmen's Bureau were by no means a homogenous group. President Johnson had the ability to replace troublesome abolitionist agents, the preferred method of eliminating a bothersome local official seems to have been to transfer him to Washington.(56) Only one of the ten district commissioners, Edgar Gregory, was a committed abolitionist, though several of the other commissioners "were on record as opposing slavery."(57) After protests from the white population, Gregory was transferred from Texas to Washington to work on formulating "procedural changes" and other bureaucratic trivia at the Bureau office in Washington. Tellingly, one history of the Freedmen's Bureau states erroneously that one recalcitrant official was dismissed by the Bureau when in fact he had simply been neutralized by transfer to headquarters.(58) He might as well have been dismissed.
Other Bureau assistant commissioners had policies more acceptable to those wanting to restore white supremacy in the South. The assistant commissioner in charge of Bureau operations in Florida, a "close" friend of General Howard, "kept Florida Negroes firmly tied to the planters" who had formerly owned them.(59) Some agents of the Bureau agents worked hard to achieve modest but definite improvements in the condition of the freedmen, but at the same time the efforts of other agents had a conservative effect, helping to consolidate and maintain the authority of planters over the freedmen. One traveler in the South noted that "the hostility to the Freedmen's Bureau seemed to be general in nature, not specific.. in practice they were very glad of the supervision... the negroes could not be controlled except by the favour of the Bureau agents."(60)
Aside from skin colour, a trait shared by both Bureau agent and planter was paternalism towards blacks. Howard's assertion that the Bureau showed that America was "a Nation which cares for its children" suggests a very paternalistic attitude to the newly freed men and women of the South.(61) The attitude of individual Bureau agents in Arkansas have been described as viewing themselves as "surrogate planters, white patriarchs taking care of infantile Sambos."(62) Some agents were far worse than paternalistic towards the freedman and were openly cruel and abusive towards them. De Forest related amusing anecdotes about blacks to Northern readers, suggesting a mild form of racism, but his attitude was moderate indeed compared to those of some other Bureau agents. Some agents forced freedwomen to have sex with them. Agent Thomas Hunnicutt in Arkansas told a freedwomen who protested his advances that she was not "the first damn yellow woman he ever screwed." Another agent in Arkansas had sex with "nearly every coloured girl" he met in the course of his Bureau duties.(63)
The material assistance given to freedmen was minimal. One factor limiting the amount of support given to blacks was the "rugged individualism" prevailing in America at this time. It was feared that excessive generosity in supporting the poor would encourage dependence and reduce the willingness to work. In 1865, the economic devastation in the South led the Freedmen's Bureau and other government organizations to distribute rations to the destitute, both white and black. In 1865, Harper's Magazine agreed with the government's policy of providing physical protection to the freedmen but without "maintaining then in idleness. The rations given to white and blacks will be withdrawn as quickly as possible."(64)
While Northerners were generally opposed to support for both able-bodied whites and blacks, attitudes about blacks heightened concerns about the possible effects of support on the work-ethic of the freedmen. This attitude is seen in an article in The Atlantic Monthly which describes the black as "no model of virtue or manliness. He loves idleness, he has little comprehension of right and wrong, and he is improvident to the last degree of childishness."(65) In arguing that blacks were inherently lazy, Senators would point to the curious blacks who had filled the public galleries in Congress ever since Emancipation; on a week-day they should be at work.(66) In October 1868, an article by John De Forest appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in which he articulated Victorian attitudes towards work, thrift, and the "survival of the fittest" in his analysis of the freedmen's situation. Rather than seeing blacks as a monolithic group in terms of their attitudes towards work, De Forest saw an emerging division within the freedmen population. Some blacks had clearly taken advantage of the opportunities provided by Emancipation and "are becoming what the Southerners term 'decent niggers.'" Another groups of freedmen, however, have revealed themselves as improvident and lazy and "are turning into poor black trash." De Forest opined that "the low-down negro will of course follow the low-down white into sure and deserved oblivion."(67) De Forest condemned the laziness and lack of virtue on the part of blacks as responsible for the fact that few had acquired land; he wrote that despite the fact that land was cheap only three freedmen in his area had had the "virtue to save and acquire it."(68) The idea that freedmen may be as effectively barred from owning land by low earning-power as a law prohibiting sales to blacks or that the government ought to provide assistance in this matter does not seem to have occurred to De Forest. De Forest despaired of blacks constantly demanding hand-outs from the Freedmen's Brueau. The Bureau had undertaken to help blacks with transportation costs so they could reunite with family members who had been sold away under slavery. To De Forest, this assistance was a needless frill. He wrote that he believed in paying for transportation "less than I believed in the distribution of rations and modes of charity generally." According to De Forest, if the "would-be tourists" wanted to travel, "they should not insist on doing it at the expense of the nation but should earn money and pay their own fare, like white people."(69) De Forest was also very parsimonious in terms of the goods his office distributed. For instance, he allowed people to select only one item from his inventory, for instance, either shoes or a blanket, but not both.(70)
From reading Northern magazines of the period, the dominant impression one receives of Northern attitudes towards the freedmen is that the issues surrounding Southern blacks were settled when they became legally free. Henceforth, blacks should earn their keep in the competitive free market like white men and stop demanding charity. In October 1868, an article in The Atlantic Monthly entitled "Free Produce Among the Quakers" dealt with the closing of a store in Philadelphia that had sold goods produced by free blacks. Now that slavery was abolished, customers no longer felt morally obligated to pay extra for goods produced by
blacks and the store went out of business. The operator echoed the comments of those abolitionist organizations which had refused to disband, saying that "'All of slavery is not gone yet.'"(71) The view that siginificantly more needed to be done to help black Americans was certainly an unpopular one in America at this time. Even in the Freedmen's Bureau, an organization set up to assist blacks, the prevailing notion was that the blacks were now responsible for their own welfare and that beyond a minimal amount of intitial assistance from the Bureau, should expect nothing from the government.
Several factors contributed to produce the minimalist policy the Bureau and its agents followed. The Union had fought a long and costly war that had resulted in freedom for the slaves. It would be natural for Northerners, especially army officers who had risked their lives in the war to see this a sufficient sacrifice. As well, Northern society and even some former abolitionists were by no means free of racism. Rinton Rowan Helper's 1858 book The Impending Crisis had been a major anti-slavery work. After the Civil War, Helper published a series of virulently racist books in which he urged that every non-white be deported from the United States by July 4, 1876.(72) In a society where even some abolitionists were racist, it would be unrealistic to assume that most Bureau agents would be free of racism.
There were other ideological factors that limited the degree of social change the Bureau could hope to achieve in the South. These ideological factors had a direct impact by influencing the attitudes of Bureau agents or an indirect by undermining the institution's very existence. The United States in the nineteenth century operated largely on the principle of laissez-faire capitalism, "rugged individualism" and "limited government ideology" being the best terms to describe the prevailing mindset. As a government social-welfare organization, the Freedmen's Bureau was in many ways ahead of its time, out of place in nineteenth century America.(73) The respect shown by Congress and society in general for property rights resulted in most former slave-holders having their land restored, preventing few freedmen from obtaining land through Bureau. The assistance given to blacks to become independent through homesteading was minimal, closing another route to economic independence. Reverence for market forces meant that the government would not take measures to increase the wages blacks would earn while working for whites. The behaviour of many blacks clashed with the prevailined mores in bourgeois white society, making blacks seem like unworthy recipients for assistance.
The gradual winding down of the Freedmen's Bureau was complete by 1872. The political struggles over Reconstruction would contine until 1876, when the disputed presidential election of that year was settled with a compromise between Northern and Southern leaders which saw Rutherford Hayes become President in return for a promise to withdraw federal troops from the South. This is usually seen as the end of Reconstruction.(74) In failing to reconstruct the South's economy and society along more racially egalitarian lines, America ensured that the blacks of the South would live under white domination for the next century. It would be incorrect to say that nobody in the North cared about the freedmen. Rather not enough people cared enough about the blacks to sacrifice property rights, state's rights, and the accomodation of Southern whites.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Andrews, Sidney. "Three Months Among the Reconstructionists" in The Atlantic Monthly, February 1866. Boston, Ticknor and Fields. Vol. 17, pp.235-245
"Capital and Labor in the South" in Hunt's Merchant Magazine. November 1865. Vol. 43. p.395
De Forest, John William. "A Bureau Major's Business and Pleasure." Harper's New Monthly Magazine. November 1868. Volume 52. pp. 770-772
---------------------------- "Chivalrous and Semi-Chivalrous Southrons" in Harper's New Monthly Magazine. February 1869. New York. Vol. 53, pp.339-341
----------------------------"Drawing Bureau Rations" in Harper's New Monthly Magazine. June 1868. New York. Volume 52, pp. 75-76.
---------------------------- "The Man and Brother" in The Atlantic Monthly, October 1868. Vol. 19, p.414-428
Secondary Sources
Abbot, Martin. The Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina: 1865-1872. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967.
Dunning, William. Reconstruction, Political and Economic: 1865-1877. New York: Harper Brothers, 1907.
Finley,
Gillette, William. Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979.
Howard, Victor B. Black Liberation in Kentucky: Emancipation and Freedom, 1862-1884.
Lexington, Knetucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1983.
Johannsen, Robert W., editor. Reconstruction: 1865-1877 New York: The Free Press, 1970.
McFeely, William S. Yankee Stepfather: General O.O. Howards and the Freedmen. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968.
Peirce, Paul Skeels. The Freedmen's Bureau: a Chapter in the History of Reconstruction. Volume III, No. 1, The State University of Iowa Studies in Sociology, Economics, Politics, and History. Iowa City, Iowa: State University of Iowa, 1904.
Trefousse, Hans L. Reconstruction: America's First Effort at Racial Democracy. New York: Van Nostrand and Company, 1971.
White, Howard A. The Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970.
Wish, Harvey, editor. Reconstruction in the South: 1865-1877. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1965.
1. 1Hans L. Trefousse surveys the historiography of Reconstruction in Reconstruction: America's First Effort at Racial Democracy. New York: Van Nostrond Reinhold Company, 1971.p.v-vi 2Harvey Wish, Reconstruction in the South: 1865-1877. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1965. p.xxxviii. One historian who had written on Reconstruction and who felt that Griffith's film was "a wonderful way to teach history" was Woodrow Wilson. 3Ibid., p. xxxix. The 1950's and '60's saw a return to many Recontruction-era policies, including the use of federal agencies and the military to uphold the rights of blacks in the South. 4In William S. McFeely's Yankee Stepfather: General O.O. Howard and the Freedmen. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968 the non-radical and even racist aspects of the Bureau are emphasized. 5Ibid., pp.135-140 6Paul Skeels Pierce, The Freedmen's Bureau: a Chapter in the History of Reconstruction. Iowa City, Iowa: State University of Iowa, 1904. p.14 7Ibid. p.15 8Ibid. p. 35 9Ibid. 10Ibid., p. 37 11Ibid. 12McFeely, Yankee Stepfather: General O.O. Howard and the Freedmen. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968. p. 73 13Martin Abbot. The Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina: 1865-1872. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1869. p.20 14Ibid. p. 52. 15Pierce, Freedmen's Bureau. p. 46-53 16The story of the Freedman's Savings Bank is beyond the scope of the current study. Bureau officers encouraged blacks to deposit in the bank and provided support to the bank in other ways. See Carl R. Osthaus's Freedmen, Philanthropy and Fraud: a History of the Freedman's Savings Bank. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976. 17Pierce. Freedmen's Bureau. p.55 18Ibid., p. 60 19Abbott, Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina. p.393 20Abbot, Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina. p. 54 21Howard, Yankee Stepfather. p.45 22Howard A. White, The Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970. pp. 41-42 23Pierce, Freedmen's Bureau. p.129 24Ibid. 25White, Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana. p.45 26Abbot, Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina. p. 57 27Ibid. 28White, Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana. p. 44. Radical Republican Senator Thaddeus Stevens modeled his proposal for land reforms in the South after the land reforms in Russia that followed the abolition of serfdom in that country in 1864. 29Abbott, Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina. p. 59 30Ibid. p.60 31Abbott, Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina. p. 62 32Victor B. Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky: Emancipation and Freedom, 1862-1884. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1983. p.99 33Finley, From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom p.77 34Ibid. 35 White, Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana. p.46 36Ibid., p. 55 37McFeely, Yankee Stepfather. p. 216 38Ibid. 39Finley, pp.102-103 40White, Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana. p.44 41McFeely, Yankee Stepfather. p. 219 42Ibid. p.217 43Howard, Black Liberation. p.126 44McFeely, Yankee Stepfather. p. 150 45"Capital and Labour in the South" in Hunt's Merchant's Magazine. New York: William B. Dana Company, serial. Vol. 43, November 1865, p. 395 46McFeely, Yankee Stepfather. 153 47Pierce, Freedmen's Bureau. p. 138 A minimum monthly wage for freedmen was established in Kentucky in 1864, but this was before the establishment of the Bureau: see Howard, Black Libertation. p. 91 48"They were free to make contracts as they chose, even to promising to work sixteen hours a day or consenting to be flogged, provided a Bureau agent had read the contracts and explained the detrimental features." White, Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana. p.114 49Abbott, Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina. p. 69 50John De Forrest "Chivalrous and Semi-Chivalrous Southrons" in Harper's New Monthly Magazine January 1869 Vol. 38, pp. 339-41 51Abbot, Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina. p. 127 52Ibid. 53Ibid., p. 125 54Quoted in Ibid., p. 128 55Abbott, Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina. p.28 56By the end of 1867, most of the radicals had been eliminated from the active service in the Bureau by President Johnson. Transfer to headquarters in Washington was the most diplomatic way to eliminate an unwanted agent. McFeely, Yankee Stepfather. p.78 57Ibid., 72 58Pierce, Freedmen's Bureau. p. 66 59McFeely, Yankee Stepfather. p.66 60Abbott, Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina. p.128 61McFeely, Yankee Stepfather. p.85 62Finley, p.21 63Ibid., p.20 64Harper's New Monthly Magazine. November 1865. Vol. 35 p.665 65Sidney Andrews. "Three Months Among the Reconstructionists". The Atlantic Monthly February 1866 Vol. 17, p. 244 66McFeely. Yankee Stepfather. p.209 67" John W. De Forest "The Man and His Brother" in The Atlantic Monthly October 1868 Vol 19 p.424 Italics added. 68Ibid., p. 424 69 John W. De Forest. "A Bureau Major's Business and Pleasures" Harper's Magazine. November 1868. Vol. 37, p. 770 70Ibid. 71"Free Produce Among the Quakers" in The Atlantic Monthly. October 1868. Vol. 19. p.485 72Hinton Rowan Helper. Nojoque: A Question of a Continent. New York: Carleton and Co., 1867. Introduction. 73Abbot. Freedmen's Bureau in the South. p.133 74William Gillette. Retreat From Reconstruction: 1869-1879. Baton Rouge: Louisianna State Press, 1979. p. 323-330