page_title: Freedmen's Bureau
section_title: Day-to-day duties
hierarchical_section_title: Freedmen's Bureau / Achievements / Day-to-day duties
caption_attribution_description: English: Office of the Freedmen's Bureau, Memphis, Tennessee. (1866) From Harper's weekly&#160;: a journal of civilization. (New York: Harper' s Weekly Co., 1857-1916).
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: The Bureau helped solve everyday problems of the newly freed slaves, such as obtaining clothing, food, water, health care, communication with family members, and jobs. Between 1865 and 1869, it distributed 15 million rations of food to freed African Americans and 5 million rations to impoverished whites, and set up a system by which planters could borrow rations in order to feed freedmen they employed. Although the Bureau set aside $350,000 for this latter service, only $35,000 (10%) was borrowed by planters.
  The Bureau's humanitarian efforts had limited success. Medical treatment of the freedmen was severely deficient, as most southern white doctors and nurses would not treat freedmen, much infrastructure had been destroyed by the war, and people had few means of improving sanitation. Blacks had little opportunity to develop as medical personnel. Travelers carried epidemics of cholera and yellow fever along the river corridors, which broke out across the South and caused many fatalities, especially among the poor.
caption: The Freedmen's Bureau office in Memphis, Tennessee, 1866.
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