“Initially, the bureau planned to lease these lands — up to 40 acres — to the freedpeople for a set time, generally three years, and then allow them to purchase the land. This was the ultimate desire of the freedpeople,” Damani Davis, an archivist who oversees the National Archives’ Freedmen’s Bureau collection, tells Teen Vogue. “They wanted and needed a permanent or long-term federal institution that would help them achieve their dream of economic independence and self-autonomy through ownership, rigorous educational opportunities, protection, and equality before the law.”
By June of that year, around 40,000 Black people had been settled on the land set aside for them through Sherman’s orders. Initiatives like land redistribution initially offered hope for economic independence and self-sufficiency, but were curtailed by President Andrew Johnson.
In April, one month after the Freedmen’s Bureau was established, Lincoln was assassinated, then Johnson took office. Johnson, a white supremacist, had land taken from many of the freedpeople and returned to former Confederates. By the summer of 1866, most of the land had been taken back.
Challenges and Opposition
“The will to truly support the transition of the Freedpeople from enslavement to self-sufficient citizenship was not there. The Freedmen’s Bureau was never adequately funded or allowed to become a long-term agency committed to a true transition from slavery to freedom,” explains Davis. “The former Confederates, and most white Southerners in general, opposed any federal support for the Freedpeople that would contribute in any way to their social, economic, educational, or political advancement.”
Perhaps more importantly, though, political opposition also hampered the Bureau’s effectiveness. The agency was initially supposed to exist for one year, but in 1866, lawmakers sought to remove the expiration date and expand support to include freedpeople and refugees everywhere across the United States, not just the South. Iterations of the bill were vetoed by President Johnson twice before the Senate and the House overrode the veto. On July 16, 1866, the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1866 became law.
But just seven years after its creation, in 1872, it was disbanded. “Unfortunately, throughout its entire short existence,” says Davis, “it was completely hamstrung by those who opposed it and did not want it to succeed in fulfilling aspirations held by Black Americans and their supporters.”
Recordkeeping and Legacy
Though the Freedmen’s Bureau ceased operations in 1872, it resulted in the creation of millions of records with the names and information of hundreds of thousands of formerly enslaved people. Labor contracts, marriage certificates, and reports on racial violence documented the lives and struggles of freedpeople during Reconstruction. These records are invaluable to historians, genealogists, and descendants of the formerly enslaved.
“The records provide a wealth of information that could be useful for those who are interested in learning about the beginnings of Reconstruction, the end of slavery, and a lot of precursors to the violence and the eventual triumph of Jim Crow,” says Davis. “A lot of the precursors to things that happened later are highlighted within the Freedmen’s Bureau records.”