The Freedmen’s Bureau
Who Were They?
What Were They Trying to Accomplish?
General Outline
I.
What was the Freedmen’s Bureau?
II.
Why was the Freedmen’s Bureau important?
III. Who were the men who administered the Bureau?
A. National level
B. State level
C. Local level (the men “in the trenches”)
IV. Were Bureau agents conservative servants of the old
planter class? Or well-intentioned men who hoped to
see the old Confederacy abandon its old ways and join
the modern world?
President Andrew Johnson vetoes the Bureau bill
The view of the Republicans in Congress
The view of many white southerners
The Bureau provided rations for
the unemployed
The Bureau as “honest broker”
between former masters and slaves
A Freedmen’s Bureau school
An exterior view of a Bureau school
An interior view
The burning of a Freedmen’s Bureau school
Everybody wanted something from
the Bureau
A marriage ceremony arranged by the Bureau
Bureau regulations on marriage
A Bureau marriage certificate
The Bureau oversaw black voting
for the first time in U.S. history
The first vote in Virginia, 1867
Long lines at the polls
Election day became a social
occasion in New Orleans
Where were Texas Bureau agents
from?
Geographic
Origins
Number
Percent
Outside CSA
160
86.5
Old CSA
25
13.5
Geographic
Origins, Non-CSA
Number
Percent
Free States
120
75
Union Slave States
12
7.5
Foreign
28
17.5
Bureau men = city folk
Texans = country folk
Occupation
Percent of
Bureau Agents
Percent of
Texans
Professional (law,
medicine, military)
64.8
17.2
Farming
17.1
70.4
Commerce and
Industry
18.1
12.4
A study of the Freedmen’s Bureau
in Texas:
[Bureau] agents established some order where only chaos had
existed, discouraged the resumption of hostilities against the
Union, protected freed people against white violence, educated
the freedmen, and helped establish them as self-reliant,
individualistic Americans with the same legal rights as whites.
They established the former slaves as something they had never
been in the slaveholding South: citizens.
A study of the Bureau in Virginia:
The Freedmen’s Bureau in Virginia did not cater to the whims of the
old master class. The actions of Bureau officers pointed toward
change, not stasis, the future, not the past. [In searching for
Virginians to take over public office from the old Confederacy], the
Freedmen’s Bureau searched out those who promised the best hope
for change in the Old Dominion, not those who were wedded to “the
world before the flood.”