Reports of Operations
setName: label: See more items in
content: Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the District of Columbia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Museum of African American History and Culture
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NMAAHC.FB.M1055, Series 6
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The Assistant Commissioner, in order to determine the current status of freedmen and general conditions within his jurisdiction, required the regular submission of various types of reports by subassistant commissioners, local superintendents, and employment agents. As a result, he received five kinds of narrative reports: annual, quarterly, and monthly reports from staff and subordinate officers; monthly reports from visiting agents; and monthly reports of operations from industrial schools. In addition, he received trimonthly and monthly statistical reports from employment offices.

The annual, quarterly, and monthly reports from staff and subordinate officers, August 1865–December 1868, are interfiled as one series and arranged chronologically. Most of the reports, submitted by subassistant commissioners and local superintendents, treat a wide variety of subjects, including the status of freedmen's housing, hospitals, and schools; employment and contracts with employers; farming operations; and claims against the Government. The narrative reports frequently contain statistical data on the freed population in various areas and the number of freedmen furnished employment, transportation, and rations. Some reports contain information concerning the general attitudes of blacks and whites and relations between the two races.

Most monthly reports from visiting agents in the District, August 1865–February 1866, which are arranged chronologically, were written by agents of benevolent societies authorized by the Assistant Commissioner to determine the number of destitute freedmen and to recommend the issuance of rations to needy families. Monthly reports on operations of industrial schools sponsored by the Bureau, December 1865–January 1868, are also arranged chronologically. These schools, organized under Bureau auspices to employ indigent freedmen in making clothing and household items for sale, submitted reports that frequently included the number of freedmen in attendance, the amount of materials needed and manufactured, and the expenses of operating the schools. Most of the reports are for schools outside the District, including Freedmen's Village in Virginia, the Home for Freed Children in Brooklyn, N. Y., and the Howard Industrial School in Cambridge, Mass. The last two schools were established under an agreement with benevolent societies whereby the Bureau would pay for transporting freedmen to those schools to eliminate overcrowding in the District.

The trimonthly and monthly reports from employment offices are in two series. One series, entered in the registers of letters received by the Assistant Commissioner's Office, is arranged chronologically, August 1865–November 1867, and consists of reports from officials in Alexandria and Washington and from northern employment offices. These reports generally indicate the number of freedmen that applied for jobs, the number that were actually employed, and the number of applications that were received for positions as servants. The other series is unregistered and also is arranged chronologically, December 1866–September 1868. It is similar in context except that it indicates the number of freedmen transported at Government expense and the States to which they were sent.