Freedmen's Bureau: 20 Million Rations, HBCU Roots and Family Records

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Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in March 1865 under the War Department, gave it no initial funding, and expected it to last one year after the war. Commissioner Oliver O. Howard organized it into lands, records, financial affairs and medical branches, but agents soon faced the Black Codes and President Andrew Johnson, who vetoed its renewal in 1866 before Congress overrode him. The Bureau handed out 15 million rations to Black Southerners and 5 million to white Southerners, though in Alabama four times as many white people as Black people received aid.

Agents pressed freedwomen back into the fields under labor contracts, yet they also formalized thousands of marriages and helped reunite families sold apart. Howard directed $5 million to education, and 90,000 students enrolled by the end of 1865. As Klan violence grew and budgets were cut in 1869, Northern support faded, and Congress ended the Bureau in 1872 while Howard was out West. Its schools grew into HBCUs, and its papers now help families trace ancestors past the 1870 census.

In Bossier and Caddo Parishes, Louisiana, insurgents from Arkansas killed more than 150 Black Americans while a lone agent was cut off.
About half of Bureau teachers were Southern whites, a third were Black, and only a sixth were Northern whites.
Bureau textbooks paired the alphabet with lessons on hard work, forgiveness and the life of Lincoln.
George Ruby served the Bureau as a teacher, administrator and traveling inspector.
Howard, Hampton and Fisk are among roughly 25 colleges established with Bureau support.

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