Freedmens bureau and web dubois and atlantic and 1901

When W.E. Burghardt Dubois, the first Black who earned a Ph. D. from Harvard University, wrote in The Atlantic Monthly at the turn of the last century: "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line," the reader might possibly have expected DuBois to speak of the challenges and obstacles to good race relations in the 20th century. Instead, DuBois turned his facile pen and elegant style to an institution nearly forgotten in 1901 and almost universally unknown today: The Freedmen's Bureau ("Bureau"). During its short-lived existence, legally-speaking from 1865-1872 or, more expansively, from 1862-1876, however, the Bureau embodied the hopes of Black Americans, incurred the ire of Southern Whites and generally manifested that kind of bureaucratic inefficiency and incompetence that characterizes almost any new and huge venture.

When it was re-authorized in 1866, its statutory charge with respect to the new freedman (as Blacks after the Civil War were then called) was vast. DuBois lists no less than seven areas that were under its jurisdiction: (1) the relief of physical suffering; (2) the overseeing of the beginnings of free labor; (3) the buying and selling of land; (4) the establishment of schools; (5) the paying of bounties; (6) the administration of justice; and (7) the funding of all these activities. What started as a small venture in 1865 had mushroomed by 1868 into an agency with a staff of nearly 900 field personnel from Washington D.C. to Texas, "ruling, directly and indirectly, many millions of men." A glimpse into its history and charge explains the reason for such divergent reactions to it.

Origins

In his epic style DuBois tells the story of the kind of event that led to the founding of the Bureau. Northern armies invaded the South. They met resistance, to be sure, but many slaves beome uncertain of what they should do. Some stayed and defended their master's property but others, maybe many more, decidee to sidle up to the Union troops to see if they could sell or donate their services. Along with potential troops would come women and children, vulnerable and often in need of nourishment and medical care. Thus, in the early days of the war, the North learned that their invasions were producing a great number of displaced Black people, many of whom wanted to be loyal to the Union. The men became military laborers and, soon, soldiers. A need, as well as a new manpower, was discovered.

One of the delightful things about DuBois, as he gets "warmed up" in his story is his language. Instead of calling the President, "Mr. Lincoln," he will say: "Then the long-headed man, with care-chiseled face, who sat in the White House..." He described the Blacks that gathered to the Union army as follows: "that dark and human cloud that clung like remorse on the rear of those swift columns, swelling at times to half their size, almost engulfing and choking them." The new Bureau, originally located in the War Department was headed by Oliver O. Howard, and:

"at a stroke of the pen, was erected a government of millions of men, -- and not ordinary men, either, but black men emasculated by a peculiarly complete system of slavery, centuries old; and now, suddenly, violently, they come into a new birthright, at a time of war and passion, in the midst of the stricken, embittered population of their former masters."

This new agency, much like the Department of Homeland Security in our day, grew up nearly overnight and immediately had the pressing needs of millions of Americans as its charge.

Development/Tasks

The Bureau was charged with uplifting the life of Blacks, even though it had very little legal and no military clout. And, as DuBois frankly acknowledged, its mission seemed to be as a counterbalance to the civil courts of the south, which were fully "unreconstructed." Thus, the Bureau was "pro-Black," which meant that its interests inevitably collided with that of the White citizens. He speaks about the "mighty human passions" that were felt by two contrasting "figures":

"the one a gray-haired gentleman, whose fathers had quit themselves like men, whose sons lay in nameless graves, who bowed to the evil of slavery because its abolition boded untold ill to all; who stood at last, in the evening of life, a blighted, ruined form, with hate in his eyes. And the other, a form hovering dark and mother-like, her awful face black with the mists of centuries, had aforetime bent in love over her white master's cradle, rocked his sons and daughters to sleep, and closed in death the sunken eyes of his wife to the world; ay, too, had laid herself low to his lust and borne a tawny man child to the world, only to see her dark boy's limbs scattered to the winds by midnight marauders riding after Damned Niggers."

Yet despite these insuperable odds, the Bureau did have signal successes. As DuBois argues:

"The greatest success of the Freedmen's Bureau lay in the planting of the free school among Negroes, and the idea of free elementary education among all classes in the South. It not only called the schoolmistress through the benevolent agencies, and built them schoolhouses, but it helped discover and support such apostles of human development as Edmund Ware, Erastus Cravath, and Samuel Armstrong. State superintendents of education were appointed, and by 1870 150,000 children were in school."

Schools such as Fisk, Howard and Hampton were founded in those days. It is not too much of a stretch to claim that, whatever you may think of her politics, Condoleezza Rice wouldn't have gotten to where she is today without the work of the Freedmen's Bureau.

Conclusion

The Bureau is long-forgotten to all but scholars today. However, spending a few moments with it, and with its most eloquent expositor, WEB DuBois, can help us understand its mingled hopefulness and futility, ingenuity and incompetence, and make us understand how the task of healing and building a nation fully justifies Jesus' words: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the Children of God."

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