Introduction: The Freeman's
Bureau II
The Freedmen's
Bureau For The Relief of Refugees
The Protection and
Advancement of American Black US Citizens
Enable to appreciate what
is strangely occurring to among American Black US citizens, i.e.,
Emancipated Slaves, Freedmen-Freemen Refugees- the "slave race" or
"community", one must understands that their American Dream Quest
experience is the far and away the most unique of all the immigrant
populations of America.
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 defenseless 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."
