Freedmen Bureau Research Paper

The Freedmen Bureau or The Bureau of Refugees was an act passed by Congress on March 3, 1865 to establish a bureau for the relief of freedmen and refugees. Established two months before Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to the Union’s Ulysses S. Grant, putting an end to the Civil War on April 9, 1865. The bureau was to provide food, shelter, clothing, medical services, and land to displaced southerners. Additionally, the bureau was established to assist in the political and social reconstruction of post-war Southern states and help formerly enslaved African Americans transition from slavery to freedom and citizenship. The bureau was halted from fully carrying out its program due to a shortage of funds and workers, along with political problems most notably regarding race and Reconstruction. …show more content…
Some senators objected to placing the Freedmen’s Bureau in the Department of War, favoring the Department of the Treasury instead. In 1863 Representative T. D. Eliot of Massachusetts proposed a bill establishing a bureau of emancipation within the Department of War to provide protection and support to newly freed African Americans. The House spent two months debating the bill and finally passed it with a vote of 69 to 67, the bill was then referred to the Senate’s Select Committee on Slavery and Freedom, chaired by Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. The bureau was initiated by President Abraham Lincoln and was intended to last for one year after the end of the Civil War. Lincoln signed the act into law for the bureau to oversee all affairs relating to refugees and freedmen and lands abandoned or seized during the war. President Andrew Johnson appointed U.S. Army officer Oliver Otis Howard as commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau in

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