Freedmen's Bureau

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was an agency of early Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865, and operated briefly as a U.S. government agency, from 1865 to 1872, after the American Civil War, to direct "provisions, clothing, and fuel...for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children". Background and operations In 1863, the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission was established. Two years later, as a result of the inquiry the Freedmen's Bureau Bill was passed, which established the Freedmen's Bureau as initiated by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. It was intended to last for one year after the end of the Civil War. The Bureau became a part of the United States Department of War, as Congress provided no funding for it. The War Department was the only agency with funds the Freedmen's Bureau could use and which had an existing presence in the South. Headed by Union Army General Oliver O. Howard, the Bureau started operations in 1865. From the beginning, its representatives found its tasks very difficult, in part because Southern legislatures passed Black Codes that restricted movement, conditions of labor, and other civil rights of African Americans, nearly replicating the conditions of slavery. Also, the Freedmen's Bureau only controlled a limited amount of arable land. The Bureau's powers were expanded to help African Americans find family members from whom they had become separated during the war. It arranged to teach them to read and write—skills considered critical by the freedmen themselves as well as by the government. Bureau agents also served as legal advocates for African Americans in both state and federal courts, mostly in cases dealing with family issues. The Bureau encouraged former major planters to rebuild their plantations and pay wages to their previously enslaved workers. It kept an eye on the contracts between the newly free laborers and planters, given that few freedmen had yet gained adequate reading skills, and pushed whites and blacks to work together in a free-labor market as employers and employees rather than as masters and slaves.