The U.S. Freedmen's Bureau in Post-Civil War Reconstruction

Abstract

The transition from slavery to freedom in the post-Civil War American South featured the efforts of the Freedmen's Bureau (FB) to help ex-slaves overcome an extremely hostile, racist environment that included the need to articulate new labor relations structures given the demise of the plantation system, to overcome the limitations on equality legislated by the infamous Black Codes, to address the pressing need to educate masses of highly illiterate black children, and the need to provide protection for freedmen from unscrupulous landowners. This paper seeks to measure the degree to which accounting and those performing accounting functions for the FB were able to ameliorate these dire conditions that have caused Reconstruction to be perceived as one of the most negative epochs in the history of American democracy.

Contracting, property rights and liberty

“…Contracts under the LCS followed standard formats and imposed obligations on both freed-people and employers, the performance of which was intended to be evidenced by accounts (Fleischman et al, 2014). There was manifold variety in the types of contract entered into, some of which was in response to local variations in the type and scale of cultivation.…”

“…9 The situation described by Stanley (1998, p. 65), where hiring was done on a day-to-day basis and "either party could end the contract at will", was far from the case in the post-bellum South. Here freedpeople outside contracts could find themselves imprisoned for vagrancy (Richardson, 1963;Nieman, 1979, p. 118;Steinfield, 2001, p. 267;Fleischman et al 2014).…”

“…The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, more commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau (FB), was an agency of the U.S. War Department, established in 1865 to provide relief and facilitate the reconstruction of the former Confederate states, whose economy lay in tatters (Fleischman et al, 2014). 1 Once the Civil War had ended, newly emancipated slaves were in need of shelter, employment and income.…”

“…At a minimum, it saved hundreds of thousands from starvation, provided health-care and clothing and promoted education for black children (e.g. Jackson, 1923;Olds, 1963;Colby, 1985;Pearson, 2002;Wakefield, 2003;Fleischman et al, 2014). Despite the continual hostility that FB officials faced from former slaveholders who loathed both to pay for labour and to refrain from physical coercion, the LCS became a tolerable solution to the majority of white constituents (i.e.…”

Does Stewardship Still Have A Role?

“…The basis for resolving disputes was accounting evidence heard before tribunals and local courts. However, the system proved untenable from the outset owing to the lack of audit of the employers' figures allied to a prejudiced and ineffectual judicial process, and was instrumental in the ex-slaves continued servitude [Fleischman et al, 2014].…”