Too Great
a Burden to Bear
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Reconstructing America
Andrew L. Slap, series editor
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Too Great
a Burden to Bear
Th
e Struggle and Failure
of the Freedmen’s
Bureau in Texas
Christopher B. Bean
Fordham University Press
New York 2016
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Copyright © 2016 Fordham University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bean, Christopher B.
Title: Too great a burden to bear : the struggle and failure of the
Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas / Christopher B. Bean.
Description: First edition. | New York : Fordham University Press, 2016. |
Series: Reconstructing America | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2015042262 (print) | LCCN 2016006934 (ebook) | ISBN
9780823268757 (cloth : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9780823271764 (paper :
alkaline paper) | ISBN 9780823268764 (ePub)
Subjects: LCSH: African Americans—Texas—History—19th century. |
Freedmen—Texas—History. | Reconstruction (U.S. history,
1865–1877)—Texas. | United States. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and
Abandoned Lands—Offi
cials and employees—Biography. | United States.
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands—History. | Texas—Race
relations—History—19th century. | BISAC: HISTORY / United States / Civil
War Period (1850–1877). | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / African
American Studies.
Classifi cation: LCC E185.93.T4 B43 2016 (print) | LCC E185.93.T4 (ebook) |
DDC 305.896/073076409034—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015042262
Printed in the United States of America
18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1
First edition
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Contents
Introduction | 1
“A
Stranger Amongst Strangers”:
Who Were the Subassistant
Commissioners? | 5
“Th
e Post of Greatest Peril”:
Th
e E. M. Gregory Era,
September 1865–April 1866 | 30
Conservative
Phoenix:
Th
e J. B. Kiddoo Era,
May 1866–Summer 1866 | 47
Bureau Expansion, Bureau Courts,
and the Black Code: Th
e J. B.
Kiddoo Era, Summer 1866–
November 1866 | 63
Th
e Bureau’s Highwater Mark:
Th
e J. B. Kiddoo Era, November
1866–January 1867 | 8 9
“Th
ey Must Vote with the Party
Th
at Shed Th
eir Blood . . . In Giving
Th
em Liberty.” Bureau Agents,
Politics, and the Bureau’s New Order:
Th
e Charles Griffi
n Era, January
1867–Summer 1867 | 111
Violence, Frustration, and Yellow
Fever: Th
e Charles Griffi
n Era,
Summer–Fall 1867 | 132
General Orders No. 40 and the
Freedmen’s Bureau’s End:
Th
e J. J. Reynolds Era, September
1867–December 1868 | 148
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vi Contents
Conclusion:
Th
e Subassistant
Commissioners in Texas | 167
Appendix
A
185
Appendix
B
189
Notes
195
Bibliography
275
Index
299
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Introduction
Few eras in American history have a more profound and lasting imprint on
this country as the decade or so that followed the Civil War. Reconstruc-
tion, as it’s called, was an attempt to wipe away the vestiges of slavery and
to reintegrate the former Confederate states into their normal places in the
Union. By infusing the ideals of “free men, free soil, and free labor,” Republi-
cans hoped to shape the South in the image of the victorious North, with all
remnants of the old order erased. Central to this restructuring was an organiza-
tion created with much hope and optimism. Passed on March 3, 1865, the
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, more commonly called
the Freedmen’s Bureau, was the fi rst federal social- welfare organization. Func-
tioning under the War Department, it operated in all the former Confederacy
and slave states. According to historian John A. Carpenter, the “fact that the
Freedmen’s Bureau existed at all was a miracle.” It had a multipurpose task:
easing the transition of the freedpeople from servitude to freedom; implanting
republican ideals of democracy and free labor in the ashes of the “peculiar insti-
tution;” and preventing any further attempts to break up the Union.
Legislators wrestled with exactly how to empower it. While some worried
the organization might create a permanent dependent class, others feared it
might disrupt federalism. A few, however, prophesied the agency becoming a
to
ol to control freed votes, with its agents being “overseers” and “negro drivers,”
who might “re- enslave” the emancipated. Still others doubted its constitution-
ality. With little consensus on how to address the needs of the former slaves,
Congress was essentially experimenting. Congressman Robert C. Schenk of
Ohio best summarized it as “experimental legislation,” continuing with,
it is better, from the very nature of the case, as it is a matter which relates to
an emergency, to a necessity, to an accident, as it were of the times and the
condition of the war in which we are, that the system should build itself up
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2 Introduction
and grow by accretion and development according to the necessities as they
arise or are found to exist . . . If you attempt to provide in advance for every
particular thing, if you have complicated machinery in this bill, or simple
machinery even, running so much into detail, you run the risk of not accom-
plishing the object you seek, but, on the contrary, the further risk of defeat-
ing the very object which you are engaged in by raising endless questions as
to the meaning or application of this particular provision of this law.
Its work “must be left to the discretion of those engaged in [the footwork]. . . . ”
Without rigid guidelines and with uncertain “objectives” and “mandates,”
Bureau offi
cials had to fi ll in the void. Much of their policy, consequently, resem-
bled the Freedmen’s Bureau bill itself: vague and, at times, confusing. Orders,
letters, and instructions (oft en open to interpretation) fi ltered down the chain
of command to fi eld personnel. In his Autobiography the commissioner of the
Bureau, Oliver Otis Howard, stated why he resisted “one minute system of
rules”: he wanted subordinates to improvise and adapt. A very decentralized
and fl uid system was created so that how orders would be interpreted, imple-
mented, and enforced generally fell to the men in the fi eld. Th
ese men literally
dictated the agency’s policy. As noted by historians Eileen Boris and Peter
Bardaglio, “ultimately public policy is forged in the minute regulations, and in
the interpreting them on a daily basis.” Decentralization allowed for quick,
decisive moves as well as ingenuity. Yet it also created much indecision and
confusion. Such a framework resulted in fi eld agents’ truly becoming “Th
e
Bureau” within their respective areas.
In its brief seven- year existence, the Freedmen’s Bureau became the epicen-
ter of the debate about Reconstruction. Cognizant of its responsibilities, Repub-
licans and Democrats fi ercely debated its necessity. Th
roughout the years,
students have highlighted the agency’s features. One facet, however, has been
neglected until recently: the subassistant commissioners (SACs), the men in
direct contact with Southern civilians. Scholars have begun recently to focus on
the men historian Barry Crouch termed the “hearts of Reconstruction,” but a
number have examined only individual experiences, oft en neglecting other
signifi cant questions.
Not ignoring individual experiences and attitudes, this work will go fur-
ther, focusing on the agents at a more personal level. Were they Southern or
Northern born? Could they be considered poor, middle- class, or wealthy?
Were they married or single? Did the agency prefer young, middle- age, or
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Introduction 3
older men as agents? Did these men have military experience or were they
civilians? What occupations did the Bureau draw from? Th
e answers to these
questions will help us understand the type of man Bureau offi
cials believed
qualifi ed—or not qualifi ed—to oversee the freedpeople’s transition to free-
dom. A brief chronicling of the image of the Bureau agent is in order. During
their time in offi
ce, these men elicited varied reactions from the public. Where
contemporaries left off , the academic community picked up, and the discus-
sion of the SAC’s role and eff ect, at times, became very heated. For nearly a
century, the dominant view of the Bureau man was of occupier—one who
descended on the prostrate South to meddle with race relations by fi lling
freedpeople’s heads with wild ideas contrary to their natural state in life and
enriching himself at the expense of white Southerners, and to brutalize the
ese avaricious “carpetbaggers” unnecessarily
antagonized the emancipated against their former masters, all the while ben-
efi ting from this tumult politically and fi nancially. Infl uenced by the events
unfolding across the South during the 1960s, historians revisited the role of the
Freedmen’s Bureau in Reconstruction. Such works revised the agent as a prod-
uct of his time, who was subject to the whole gamut of human characteristics,
from honesty and compassion to greed and nefariousness, and whose eff orts,
for the most part, failed to live up to its promises. At the same time, others
were a little more critical. To them, they represented not a vehicle of liberation,
but an instrument for oppression. Th
eir lack of commitment to the needs of
the freedmen, racial and gender predispositions, and desire for order and prof-
itability at all costs “banked the fi res of freedom.” Th
ey achieved this by collud-
ing with white Southern planters essentially to re- enslave the freedpeople.
Since the 1980s, however, a “new” image of the Bureau agent has appeared, one
more balanced than previous interpretations. Appreciating the enormity of
the task, contemporary historians “go beyond [their] limitations, weaknesses,
and failures to underscore the signifi cant role [these men] played in the former
slaves’ lives. . . . ”
A close examination reveals the typical SAC in Texas (with exceptions of
course) was a well- intentioned, honest man toward the freedpeople. Although
infl uenced by contemporary attitudes toward labor, dependency, and gender,
for his time he engaged in work seen as quite philanthropic. Th
e country asked
them to do the unprecedented, and, despite falling short of some expectations
(including some of their own), they achieved more than many thought possible.
Sacrifi cing to help the former slaves, some men paid fi nancially, some paid
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4 Introduction
socially, and others paid with their lives. Whatever their motives and the
obstacles placed before them, their attempts and sacrifi ces, in the words of
Bureau historian Paul A. Cimbala, deserve “better than a summary dismissal
. . . as being no more than the eff ort of a racist society attempting to defi ne a
subordi
nate kind of freedom for the ex- slaves.”
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“A Stranger
1
Amongst Strangers”
Who Were the Subassistant
Commissioners?
Congress charged the Freedmen’s Bureau with a multipurpose task. Th is
task fell specifi cally to the subassistant commissioners, who were directly
in contact with Southern whites and former slaves. Few subjects in
Reconstruction history have more diff ering interpretations than of these men,
considered everything from “avaricious harpies” and “honest and genuine vehi-
cles of change” to “racist paternalists.” Later scholars would credit SACs with
transitioning, to a small extent, the former slave into postwar American society,
while simultaneously indicting them for everything from stifl ing poverty and
racial segregation to black degradation during Hurricane Katrina. By doing so,
their identities become more than faceless, abstract entities to be either loathed or
applauded. Lost is the fact that a Texas Bureau man went on to lead United States
military forces in Cuba in 1898 against the Spanish; or that one fi red the fi rst
Union shots in defense at Fort Sumter; or that military offi
cials initially had
another tentatively scheduled to lead the expedition into Montana where he
would have met his fate at the Little Big Horn; or that many others went on to
productive (if less spectacular) lives. Was the “avaricious harpy” a wealthy man or
from more common stock? Was he a Yankee or did he hail from Dixie? Did that
“honest and genuine vehicle of change” have a family or was he single? What
occupations were those “racist paternalists” drawn from? Was it from the civilian
sector or the military? By focusing on such matters, interested readers can address
the very important question of who were the agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
Th
e answers will suggest the type of man high Bureau offi
cials believed most
qualifi ed (or not) to guide the freedmen’s journey from bondage to freedom.
Th
e Bureau operated within all eleven former Confederate states as well as
Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.