page_title: Freedmen's Bureau
section_title: Continuing insurgency
hierarchical_section_title: Freedmen's Bureau / Continuing insurgency
caption_attribution_description: TITLE: The Freedman's Bureau! An agency to keep the Negro in idleness at the expense of the white man. Twice vetoed by the President, and made a law by Congress. Support Congress &amp; you support the Negro Sustain the President &amp; you protect the white man CALL NUMBER: Broadside Collection, portfolio 159, no. 9a c-Rare Bk Coll REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-USZ62-40764 (b&amp;w film copy neg.) SUMMARY: One in a series of racist posters attacking Radical Republicans on the issue of black suffrage, issued during the Pennsylvania gubernatorial election of 1866. (See also "The Constitutional Amendment!," no. 1866-5.) The series advocates the election of Hiester Clymer, who ran for governor on a white-supremacy platform, supporting President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction policies. In this poster a black man lounges idly in the foreground as one white man ploughs his field and another chops wood. Accompanying labels are: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread," and "The white man must work to keep his children and pay his taxes." The black man wonders, "Whar is de use for me to work as long as dey make dese appropriations." Above in a cloud is an image of the "Freedman's Bureau! Negro Estimate of Freedom!" The bureau is pictured as a large domed building resembling the U.S. Capitol and is inscribed "Freedom and No Work." Its columns and walls are labeled, "Candy," "Rum, Gin, Whiskey," "Sugar Plums," "Indolence," "White Women," "Apathy," "White Sugar," "Idleness," "Fish Balls," "Clams," "Stews," and "Pies." At right is a table giving figures for the funds appropriated by Congress to support the bureau and information on the inequity of the bounties received by black and white veterans of the Civil War. MEDIUM: 1 print&#160;: woodcut on wove paper&#160;; 45.5 x 58.1 cm (image) CREATED/PUBLISHED: 1866. NOTES: Title appears as it is written on the item. Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston&#160;: G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1866-6.
context_page_description: The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. government agency from 1865 to 1872, after the 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."
  The Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which established the Freedmen's Bureau on March 3, 1865, was initiated by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and was intended to last for one year after the end of the Civil War. The Freedmen's Bureau was an important agency of early Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. The Bureau was made a part of the United States Department of War, as it was the only agency with an existing organization that could be assigned to the South. Headed by Union Army General Oliver O. Howard, the Bureau started operations in 1865. In its first year, its representatives found its tasks to be very difficult, partly because Southern legislatures passed laws for Black Codes that restricted movement, conditions of labor, and other civil rights of African Americans, nearly duplicating conditions of slavery.
context_section_description: Most of the assistant commissioners, realizing that African Americans would not receive fair trials in the civil courts, tried to handle black cases in their own Bureau courts. Southern whites objected that this was unconstitutional. In Alabama, the Bureau commissioned state and county judges as Bureau agents. They were to try cases involving blacks with no distinctions on racial grounds. If a judge refused, the Freedmen's Bureau could institute martial law in his district. All but three judges accepted their unwanted commissions, and the governor urged compliance.
  Perhaps the most difficult region reported by the Freedmen's Bureau was Louisiana's Caddo and Bossier parishes in the northwest part of the state. It had not suffered wartime devastation or Union occupation, but white hostility was high against the black majority population. Well-meaning Bureau agents were understaffed and weakly supported by federal troops, and found their investigations blocked and authority undermined at every turn by recalcitrant plantation owners. Murders of freedmen were common, and white suspects in these cases were not prosecuted. Bureau agents did negotiate labor contracts, build schools and hospitals, and aid freedmen, but they struggled against the violence of the oppressive environment.
  In addition to internal parish problems, this area was reportedly invaded by insurgents from Arkansas, described as Desperadoes by the Bureau agent in 1868. In September 1868, for example, whites arrested and convicted 21 blacks accused of planning an insurrection in Bossier Parish. Henry Jones, accused of being the leader of the purported insurrection, was shot and left to burn by whites, but he survived, badly hurt. Other freedmen were killed or driven from their land by Arkansas Desperadoes. Whites were anxious about their power as blacks were to receive the franchise, and tensions were rising over land use. In early October, blacks arrested two whites from Arkansas "accused of being part of a mob... that killed several Negroes." The agent reported 14 blacks had been killed in this incident, then said that another eight to ten had been killed by the same Desperadoes. Blacks were reported to have killed the two white men in the altercation. The whites' Arkansas friends and local whites went on a rampage against blacks in the area, resulting in more than 150 blacks being killed.
  In March 1872, at the request of President Ulysses S. Grant and the Secretary of the Interior, Columbus Delano, General Howard was asked to temporarily leave his duties as Commissioner of the Bureau to deal with Indian affairs in the west. Upon returning from his assignment in November 1872, General Howard discovered that the Bureau and all of its activities had been officially terminated by Congress, effective as of June (Howard, 1907). While General Howard was dealing with Indian affairs in the west, the Freedmen's Bureau was steadily losing its support in Congress. President Johnson had opposed the Freedmen's Bureau and his attitude encouraged many people, especially white Southerners, to challenge the Bureau. But insurgents showed that the war had not ended, as armed whites attacked black Republicans and their sympathizers, including teachers and officeholders. Congress dismantled the Bureau in 1872 due to pressure from white Southerners. The Bureau was unable to change much of the social dynamic as whites continued to seek supremacy over blacks, frequently with violence.
  In his autobiography, General Howard expressed great frustration about Congress having closed down the bureau. He said, "the legislative action, however, was just what I desired, except that I would have preferred to close out my own Bureau and not have another do it for me in an unfriendly manner in my absence."  All documents and matters pertaining to the Freedmen's Bureau were transferred from the office of General Howard to the War Department of the United States Congress.
caption: An 1866 poster attacking the Freedmen's Bureau.
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