The
Freeman's Bureau was established by Congress on 3rd March, 1865. The
bureau was designed to protect the interests of former slaves. This
included helping them to find new employment and to improve educational
and health facilities. In the year that followed the bureau spent
$17,000,000 establishing 4,000 schools, 100 hospitals and providing
homes and food for former slaves.
The Freeman's Bureau also helped to establish Howard
University in Washington in 1867. Instigated by the Radical
Republicans in Congress it was named after General Oliver
Howard, a Civil War hero and commissioner
of the Bureau of Refugees and a leading figure in the Freeman's Bureau.
Attempts by Congress to extend the powers of the Freemen's Bureau
was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson
in February, 1866. This increased the conflict between Johnson and
the Radical Republicans in Congress.
(1)
African Freedmen's Inquiry Commission Report (1864)
We
must not treat them as stepchildren; there is too much danger in doing
too much as in doing too little. For a time we need a freedmen's bureau,
but not because these people are negroes, only because they are men
who have been, for generations, despoiled of their rights.
The Commission is confirmed in the opinion that all aid given to these
people should be regarded as a temporary necessity; that all supervision
over them should be provisional only, and advisory in its character.
The sooner they shall stand alone and make their own unaided way,
the better both for our race and for theirs. The essential is that
we secure to them the means of making their own way; that is, that
we give them, to use the familiar phrase, "a fair chance".
If, like whites they are to be self-supporting, then, like whites,
they ought to have those rights, civil and political, without which
they are but laboring as a man labors with hands bound.
(2)
General
Oliver Howard,
speech in August, 1865 on the activities of the Freemen's Bureau.
The
government did not establish the Freedmen's Bureau in order to put
Army officers in fat places. It does not wish to multiply positions.
The object of the Bureau is to aid these people in their transition
from the darkness of slavery to the light, to the privileges and the
enjoyments of freedom. I have proposed all the time to myself to be
always looking forward to the end of the Freedmen's Bureau; and just
as soon as any State will show by the action of its officers, by the
action of its people, by the sentiments put forth, that they are ready
and willing to keep the promise and pledge of our beloved President,
endorsed by our Congress, to our freedmen, then they may have the
privilege of doing it, and it will relieve me from the responsibility.
(3)
Report
on the work of the Freemen's Bureau that was signed by General Oliver
Howard
and Salmon P. Chase (August, 1867)
The
abolition of slavery and the establishment of freedom are not the
one and the same thing. The emancipated negroes were not yet really
freemen. Their chains had indeed been sundered by the sword, but the
broken links still hung upon their limbs. The question, "What
shall be done with the negro? agitated the whole country. Some were
in favour of an immediate recognition of their equal and political
rights, and of conceding to them at once all the prerogatives of citizenship.
But only a few advocated a policy so radical, and, at the same time,
generally considered revolutionary, while many, even of those who
really wished well to the negro, doubted his capacity for citizenship,
his willingness to labour for his own support, and the possibility
of his forming, as a freeman, an integral part of the Republic.
The idea of admitting the freedmen to an equal participation in civil
and political rights was not entertained in any part of the South.
In most of the States they were not allowed to sit on juries, or even
to testify in any case in which white men were parties. They were
forbidden to own or bear firearms, and thus were rendered defenceless
against assault. Vagrant laws were passed, often relating only to
the negro, or, where applicable in terms of both white and black,
seldom or never enforced except against the latter.
In some States any court - that is, any local Justice of the Peace
- could bind out to a white person any negro under age, without his
own consent or that of his parents? The freedmen were subjected to
the punishments formerly inflicted upon slaves. Whipping especially,
when in some States disfranchised the party subjected to it, and rendered
him for ever infamous before the law, was made the penalty for the
most trifling misdemeanor.
These legal disabilities were not the only obstacles placed in the
path of the freed people. Their attempts at education provoked the
most intense and bitter hostility, as evincing a desire to render
themselves equal to the whites. Their churches and schoolhouses were
in many places destroyed by mobs. In parts of the country remote from
observation, the violence and cruelty engendered by slavery found
free scope for exercise upon the defenceless negro. In a single district,
in a single month, forty-nine cases of violence, ranging from assault
and battery to murder, in which whites were the aggressors and blacks
the sufferers, were reported.
General Howard issued his first order defining the general policy
of the Bureau on the 19th day of May 1865, at once appointed his Assistant
Commissioners, and entered upon the work assigned to him. In this
work he was greatly embarrassed by the lack of any governmental appropriations
for his Bureau, by the opposition in the South to any measures looking
towards the elevation of the freed people, and by the very widespread
distrust in the North of their capacity for improvement.
What is to be the effect of emancipation upon the industry of the
community at large, upon the amount of production, upon the intelligence
and morals of the people, upon commerce, trade, manufactures, agriculture
and population, can as yet be only a matter of conjecture; and yet
such and so marked even in these respects have been the results already,
that probably few, if any, of the intelligent portion of the Southern
people would desire to see slavery re-established. Wherever the planter
has honestly and intelligently accommodated himself to the system
of free-labour, freedom has reaped a larger harvest than ever was
garnered by slavery.
But the effect upon the freed people is no longer a matter of question.
They have refuted slavery's accusation of idleness and incapacity.
They have not only worked faithfully and well under white employers,
but, when facilities have been accorded them, have proved themselves
capable of independent and even self-organized labour. They are not
generally extravagant or wasteful. The church and the schoolhouse
are alike crowded with eager, expectant people, the rapidity of whose
development under these fostering influences has amazed both foes
and friends, and contributed more, perhaps, than any other cause to
mitigate the prejudice which survived slavery, and make the work of
enfranchisement complete.
(4)
Andrew
Johnson, letter to Benjamin B. French,
the commissioner of public buildings (8th February, 1866)
Everyone
would, and must admit, that the white race was superior to the black,
and that while we ought to do our best to bring them up to our present
level, that, in doing so, we should, at the same time raise our own
intellectual status so that the relative position of the two races
would be the same.
(5)
When Congress attempted to increase the powers of the Freemen's Bureau
in February, 1866, the proposed bill was vetoed by Andrew
Johnson.
I share with Congress
the strongest desire to secure to the freedmen the full employment
of their freedom and property and their entire independence and equality
in making contracts for their labor, but 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 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."
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