The Souls of Black Folk
“Hereafter,” he commanded, “no slaves should be allowed to come into
your lines at all; if any come without your knowledge, when owners call
for them deliver them.” Such a policy was difficult to enforce; some of
the black refugees declared themselves freemen, others showed that
their masters had deserted them, and still others were captured with
forts and plantations. Evidently, too, slaves were a source of strength
to the Confederacy, and were being used as laborers and producers.
“They constitute a military resource,” wrote Secretary Cameron, late in
1861; “and being such, that they should not be turned over to the enemy
is too plain to discuss.” So gradually the tone of the army chiefs
changed; Congress forbade the rendition of fugitives, and Butler’s
“contrabands” were welcomed as military laborers. This complicated
rather than solved the problem, for now the scattering fugitives became
a steady stream, which flowed faster as the armies marched.
Then the long-headed man with care-chiselled face who sat in the White
House saw the inevitable, and emancipated the slaves of rebels on New
Year’s, 1863. A month later Congress called earnestly for the Negro
soldiers whom the act of July, 1862, had half grudgingly allowed to
enlist. Thus the barriers were levelled and the deed was done. The
stream of fugitives swelled to a flood, and anxious army officers kept
inquiring: “What must be done with slaves, arriving almost daily? Are
we to find food and shelter for women and children?”
It was a Pierce of Boston who pointed out the way, and thus became in a
sense the founder of the Freedmen’s Bureau. He was a firm friend of
Secretary Chase; and when, in 1861, the care of slaves and abandoned
lands devolved upon the Treasury officials, Pierce was specially
detailed from the ranks to study the conditions. First, he cared for
the refugees at Fortress Monroe; and then, after Sherman had captured
Hilton Head, Pierce was sent there to found his Port Royal experiment
of making free workingmen out of slaves. Before his experiment was
barely started, however, the problem of the fugitives had assumed such
proportions that it was taken from the hands of the over-burdened
Treasury Department and given to the army officials. Already centres of
massed freedmen were forming at Fortress Monroe, Washington, New
Orleans, Vicksburg and Corinth, Columbus, Ky., and Cairo, Ill., as well
as at Port Royal. Army chaplains found here new and fruitful fields;
“superintendents of contrabands” multiplied, and some attempt at
systematic work was made by enlisting the able-bodied men and giving
work to the others.
Then came the Freedmen’s Aid societies, born of the touching appeals
from Pierce and from these other centres of distress. There was the
American Missionary Association, sprung from the Amistad, and now
full-grown for work; the various church organizations, the National
Freedmen’s Relief Association, the American Freedmen’s Union, the
Western Freedmen’s Aid Commission,—in all fifty or more active
organizations, which sent clothes, money, school-books, and teachers
southward. All they did was needed, for the destitution of the freedmen
was often reported as “too appalling for belief,” and the situation was
daily growing worse rather than better.
And daily, too, it seemed more plain that this was no ordinary matter
of temporary relief, but a national crisis; for here loomed a labor
problem of vast dimensions. Masses of Negroes stood idle, or, if they
worked spasmodically, were never sure of pay; and if perchance they
received pay, squandered the new thing thoughtlessly. In these and
other ways were camp-life and the new liberty demoralizing the
freedmen. The broader economic organization thus clearly demanded
sprang up here and there as accident and local conditions determined.
Here it was that Pierce’s Port Royal plan of leased plantations and
guided workmen pointed out the rough way. In Washington the military
governor, at the urgent appeal of the superintendent, opened
confiscated estates to the cultivation of the fugitives, and there in
the shadow of the dome gathered black farm villages. General Dix gave
over estates to the freedmen of Fortress Monroe, and so on, South and
West. The government and benevolent societies furnished the means of
cultivation, and the Negro turned again slowly to work. The systems of
control, thus started, rapidly grew, here and there, into strange
little governments, like that of General Banks in Louisiana, with its
ninety thousand black subjects, its fifty thousand guided laborers, and
its annual budget of one hundred thousand dollars and more. It made out
four thousand pay-rolls a year, registered all freedmen, inquired into
grievances and redressed them, laid and collected taxes, and
established a system of public schools. So, too, Colonel Eaton, the
superintendent of Tennessee and Arkansas, ruled over one hundred
thousand freedmen, leased and cultivated seven thousand acres of cotton
land, and fed ten thousand paupers a year. In South Carolina was
General Saxton, with his deep interest in black folk. He succeeded
Pierce and the Treasury officials, and sold forfeited estates, leased
abandoned plantations, encouraged schools, and received from Sherman,
after that terribly picturesque march to the sea, thousands of the
wretched camp followers.
Three characteristic things one might have seen in Sherman’s raid
through Georgia, which threw the new situation in shadowy relief: the
Conqueror, the Conquered, and the Negro. Some see all significance in
the grim front of the destroyer, and some in the bitter sufferers of
the Lost Cause. But to me neither soldier nor fugitive speaks with so
deep a meaning as that dark 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. In vain were they ordered back, in
vain were bridges hewn from beneath their feet; on they trudged and
writhed and surged, until they rolled into Savannah, a starved and
naked horde of tens of thousands. There too came the characteristic
military remedy: “The islands from Charleston south, the abandoned
rice-fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and
the country bordering the St. John’s River, Florida, are reserved and
set apart for the settlement of Negroes now made free by act of war.”
So read the celebrated “Field-order Number Fifteen.”
All these experiments, orders, and systems were bound to attract and
perplex the government and the nation. Directly after the Emancipation
Proclamation, Representative Eliot had introduced a bill creating a
Bureau of Emancipation; but it was never reported. The following June a
committee of inquiry, appointed by the Secretary of War, reported in
favor of a temporary bureau for the “improvement, protection, and
employment of refugee freedmen,” on much the same lines as were
afterwards followed. Petitions came in to President Lincoln from
distinguished citizens and organizations, strongly urging a
comprehensive and unified plan of dealing with the freedmen, under a
bureau which should be “charged with the study of plans and execution
of measures for easily guiding, and in every way judiciously and
humanely aiding, the passage of our emancipated and yet to be
emancipated blacks from the old condition of forced labor to their new
state of voluntary industry.”
Some half-hearted steps were taken to accomplish this, in part, by
putting the whole matter again in charge of the special Treasury
agents. Laws of 1863 and 1864 directed them to take charge of and lease
abandoned lands for periods not exceeding twelve months, and to
“provide in such leases, or otherwise, for the employment and general
welfare” of the freedmen. Most of the army officers greeted this as a
welcome relief from perplexing “Negro affairs,” and Secretary
Fessenden, July 29, 1864, issued an excellent system of regulations,
which were afterward closely followed by General Howard. Under Treasury
agents, large quantities of land were leased in the Mississippi Valley,
and many Negroes were employed; but in August, 1864, the new
regulations were suspended for reasons of “public policy,” and the army
was again in control.
Meanwhile Congress had turned its attention to the subject; and in
March the House passed a bill by a majority of two establishing a
Bureau for Freedmen in the War Department. Charles Sumner, who had
charge of the bill in the Senate, argued that freedmen and abandoned
lands ought to be under the same department, and reported a substitute
for the House bill attaching the Bureau to the Treasury Department.
This bill passed, but too late for action by the House. The debates
wandered over the whole policy of the administration and the general
question of slavery, without touching very closely the specific merits
of the measure in hand. Then the national election took place; and the
administration, with a vote of renewed confidence from the country,
addressed itself to the matter more seriously. A conference between the
two branches of Congress agreed upon a carefully drawn measure which
contained the chief provisions of Sumner’s bill, but made the proposed
organization a department independent of both the War and the Treasury
officials. The bill was conservative, giving the new department
“general superintendence of all freedmen.” Its purpose was to
“establish regulations” for them, protect them, lease them lands,
adjust their wages, and appear in civil and military courts as their
“next friend.” There were many limitations attached to the powers thus
granted, and the organization was made permanent. Nevertheless, the
Senate defeated the bill, and a new conference committee was appointed.
This committee reported a new bill, February 28, which was whirled
through just as the session closed, and became the act of 1865
establishing in the War Department a “Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and
Abandoned Lands.”
This last compromise was a hasty bit of legislation, vague and
uncertain in outline. A Bureau was created, “to continue during the
present War of Rebellion, and for one year thereafter,” to which was
given “the supervision and management of all abandoned lands and the
control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen,” under “such
rules and regulations as may be presented by the head of the Bureau and
approved by the President.” A Commissioner, appointed by the President
and Senate, was to control the Bureau, with an office force not
exceeding ten clerks. The President might also appoint assistant
commissioners in the seceded States, and to all these offices military
officials might be detailed at regular pay. The Secretary of War could
issue rations, clothing, and fuel to the destitute, and all abandoned
property was placed in the hands of the Bureau for eventual lease and
sale to ex-slaves in forty-acre parcels.
Thus did the United States government definitely assume charge of the
emancipated Negro as the ward of the nation. It was a tremendous
undertaking. Here 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 and embittered population of
their former masters. Any man might well have hesitated to assume
charge of such a work, with vast responsibilities, indefinite powers,
and limited resources. Probably no one but a soldier would have
answered such a call promptly; and, indeed, no one but a soldier could
be called, for Congress had appropriated no money for salaries and
expenses.