the Freedmen’s Bureau,” American Nineteenth Century History 8 (June 2007): 205–229
and Th
omas J. Brown, ed., Reconstructions: New Perspectives on the Postbellum United
States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Brown’s work posits the “tradi-
tional,” “revisionist,” and “post- revisionist” historiography no longer is necessary.
According to Brown, Foner dismantled the “post- revisionist” argument. I believe
that premature. Recent critics of the Bureau use the same approach as the “post-
revisionists,” particularly when indicting the agency regarding care for families, gen-
der, and marriage. Th
e battlefi eld might have changed, but not the tactics. For early
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Notes to page 3
197
criticisms, see John Rose Ficklen, History of Reconstruction in Louisiana Th
rough 1868
(Baltimore: Th
e Johns Hopkins Press, 1910); John S. Reynolds, Reconstruction in South
Carolina, 1865–1877 (Columbia: Th
e State Company Publishers, 1905); James W. Gar-
ner, Reconstruction in Mississippi (New York: Macmillan Company, 1901); William B.
Hesseltine, A History of the South, 1607–1936 (New York: Prentice Hall Inc., 1936); Hon-
orine Anne Sherman, “Th
e Freedmen’s Bureau in Louisiana” (Master’s Th
esis, Tulane
University, 1936); C. Mildred Th
ompson, Reconstruction in Georgia: Economic, Social,
Political, 1865–1872 (Savannah: Th
e Beehive Press, 1972); Laura Josephine Webster, Th
e
Operation of the Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina (New York: Russell and Russell,
1970); C. Mildred Th
ompson, “Th
e Freedmen’s Bureau in Georgia in 1865–1866: An
Instrument of Reconstruction,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 5 (March 1921): 40–49;
and E. Merton Coulter, Th
e South During Reconstruction, 1865–1877 (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University, 1947).
7. “Revisionist” works, not noted above, are Edward Longacre, “Brave, Radical,
Wild: Th
e Contentious Career of Brigadier General Edward A. Wild,” Civil War Times
Illustrated 19 (June 1980): 8–19; Ross Nathaniel Dudley, “Texas Reconstruction: Th
e
Role of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1870, Smith
County, (Tyler) Texas” (Master’s Th
esis, Texas A&I University, 1986); Steven E. Nash,
“Aiding the Southern Mountain Republicans: Th
e Freedmen’s Bureau in Buncombe
County,” North Carolina Historical Review 83 (January 2006): 1–30; Ross A. Webb,
“ ‘Th
e Past Is Never Dead, It’s Not Even Past’: Benjamin P. Runkle and the Freedmen’s
Bureau in Kentucky, 1866–1870,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 84
(Autumn 1986): 343–360; Patricia A. Haskins, “Th
e Freedmen’s Bureau in the Jackson
Purchase Region of Kentucky, 1866–1868,” Th
e Register of the Kentucky Historical Soci-
ety 110 (Summer/Autumn 2012): 503–531; and John A. Carpenter, Th
e Sword and the
Olive Branch: Oliver Otis Howard (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1964).
8. “Post- revisionist” interpretations are Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long:
Th
e Aft ermath of Slavery (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 1979); Louis Gerteis, From Con-
traband to Freedman: Federal Policy Toward Southern Blacks, 1861–1865 (Westport:
Greenwood Press, 1973); McFeely, Yankee Stepfather; Michael Perman, Emancipation
and Reconstruction, 1862–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988); George D. Humphrey,
“Th
e Failure of the Mississippi Freedmen’s Bureau in Black Labor Relations, 1865–
1867,” Journal of Mississippi History 45 (February, 1983): 23–37; Patrick Groff , “Th
e
Freedmen’s Bureau in High School History Texts,” Journal of Negro Education 51
(Autumn 1982): 425–433; Edmund L. Drago, “Black Georgia During Reconstruction”
(Ph.D. diss., University of California- Berkeley, 1975); James L. Owens, “Th
e Negro in
Georgia During Reconstruction, 1864–1872” (Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, 1975);
Daniel Novak, Th
e Wheel of Servitude: Black Forced Labor Aft er Slavery (Lexington,
Ky.: University of Kentucky Press, 1979); Donna L. Franklin, Ensuring Inequality: Th
e
Structural Transformation of the African- American Family (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1997); Robert Cruden, Negro in Reconstruction (Englewood Cliff s, N.J.:
Prentice- Hall, 1969); Arvarh E. Strickland and Jerome R. Reich, Th
e Black American
Experience: From Slavery Th
rough Reconstruction (New York: Harcourt Brace Jova-
novich, 1974); and Robert F. Engs, Freedom’s First Generation: Black Hampton, Vir-
ginia, 1861–1890 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979).
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198
Notes to pages 3–6
9. Mary Kaiser-
Farmer, Freedwomen and the Freedmen’s Bureau: Race, Gender,
and Public Policy in the Age of Emancipation (New York: Fordham University Press,
2010), 3. For works within this “new” historiography, see Richard G. Lowe, “Th
e Freed-
men’s Bureau and Local White Leaders in Virginia,” Journal of Southern History 64
(August 1998): 455–472; William H. Burks, “Th
e Freedmen’s Bureau, Politics, and Sta-
bility Operations During Reconstruction in the South” (Master’s Th
esis, U.S. Air Force
Academy, 2009); and William L. Richter, “Who Was the Real Head of the Texas Freed-
men’s Bureau? Th
e Role of Brevet Colonel William H. Sinclair as Acting Assistant
Inspector General,” Military History of the Southwest 20 (Fall 1990): 121–156.
10. Paul A. Cimbala, Under the Guardianship of the Nation: Th
e Freedmen’s Bureau
and the Reconstruction of Georgia, 1865–1870 (Athens: University of Georgia Press,
1997), xv.
1. “A Stranger Amongst Strangers”: Who Were
the Subassistant Commissioners?
1. For the historiography of subassistant commissioners, see Introduction, notes
6–8. For the connection between the Bureau’s failure and its legacy during Hurricane
Katrina, see Pamela Denise Reed, “From the Freedmen’s Bureau to FEMA: A Post-
Katrina Historical, Journalistic, and Literary Analysis,” 37 Journal of Black Studies
(March 2007): 555–567.
2. Circular letter from [O. O. Howard], April 1867, Box 401–860, Texas Adjutant
General’s Offi
ce, Texas Adjutant Generals Department, Archives and Information
Division, Texas State Archives and Commission, Austin, Texas (hereaft er cited
TxAGO); Byron Porter, Bastrop, to J. T. Kirkman, A.A.A.G., April 2, 1867, Reports of
Operations and Conditions, December 1866–May 1867, Records of the Assistant Com-
missioner for the State of Texas
, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned
Lands, 1865–1869, Record Group 105, National Archives and Records Administration,
Washington, D.C. (Microfi lm M821, reel 20), hereaft er cited AC; John William De For-
est, A Union Offi
cer in the Reconstruction, ed. James H. Croushore and David M. Pot-
ter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), 41; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s
Unfi nished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988), 143.
3. Randy Finley, From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom: Th
e Freedmen’s Bureau in
Arkansas, 1865–1869 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1996), 11; Cimbala,
Under the Guardianship of the Nation, 256. For studies citing 202 agents in Texas, see
Crouch, Freedmen’s Bureau and Black Texans, 9; and Harper, “Freedmen’s Bureau
Agents in Texas,” 2. For those mislabeled Bureau agents, see Ron Tyler, ed., New Hand-
book of Texas, 6 vols. (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996), 1:112–113, 795,
383. For an unsanctioned appointment by a fi eld agent, see Steven Hahn et al., eds.,
Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867, Series 3, Volume 1: Land
and Labor, 1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 975–977.
4. Th
e months examined in Figure 1–1 are: October 1865, January 1866, April 1866,
July 1866, October 1866, January 1867, April 1867, July 1867, October 1867, January 1868,
April 1868, July 1868, and October 1868. Th
e men for each month are taken from the
monthly “Roster of Offi
cers and Civilians.” For October 1865, April 1866, and April
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Notes to pages 6–9
199
1867, due to no extant roster, the number of agents was determined by examining ten-
ures. I counted all assigned to the district on the fi rst day of the month. Any agent
assigned later in the month was not. For example, if agent A was the agent for district
B, but replaced later in the month by another agent, agent A would appear in the sam-
ple. Th
e number of Bureau agents for each of the months, starting with October 1865,
is as follows: 12, 20, 29, 31, 33, 30, 40, 75, 63, 55, 45, 46, and 55. Th
ose agents with military
experience (either serving during the war or serving aft er the war as well as serving as
Bureau agent) are included in the numbers for “Military.” Th
ose agents with no mili-
tary experience during the Civil War and Reconstruction are included in the numbers
for “No Military.” “Northern” includes all agents born outside of the Confederate
states, including slaveholding states, such as Kentucky, that did not secede. “Southern”
includes all agents born in one of the eleven Confederate states. “N/A” includes those
whose birth state could not be defi nitively determined. Th
e information comes from
the monthly Roster of Offi
cers and Civilians.
5. Barry A. Crouch and William L. Richter both understate the number in the fi eld
at any one time. Crouch claims the high to be 69, while Richter, in two diff erent works,
cites 70 and 69. According to the Bureau’s Roster of Civilians and Agents, the actual
high was 61 SACs and 11 ASACs. Th
e two extra are attributed to the Huntsville subdis-
trict having two and another SAC not yet assigned a district. See Crouch, Freedmen’s
Bureau and Black Texans, 28; William L. Richter, Overreached on All Sides: Freedmen’s
Bureau Administrators in Texas, 1865–1868 (College Station: Texas A&M University
Press, 1991), 157; Richter, “Who Was the Real Head of the Texas Freedmen’s Bureau?”
122, 124; and Roster of Civilians and Agents, July 1867, AC, Issuances and Rosters of
Bureau Personnel and Special Orders Received, reel 19); Foner, Reconstruction, 143;
Finley, From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom, 11; Kenneth B. White, “Black Lives, Red
Tape: Th
e Alabama Freedmen’s Bureau,” Alabama Historical Quarterly 43 (Winter
1981): 244–245; and Solomon K. Smith, “Th
e Freedmen’s Bureau in Shreveport: Th
e
Struggle for Control of the Red River District,” Louisiana History 41 (Fall 2000): 436.
Rather than examine a sample, this study identifi ed all. Because of the vague and
imprecise way Reconstruction records were collected and the rather generic informa-
tion within the 1870 federal census, not all of the agents could be located and identifi ed
precisely. For consistency, I used only those found in the 1870 census (for wealth 110 of
239, or 46 percent; for occupation 139 of 239, or 58 percent; for head- of- household 105 of
239, or 44 percent; and for marital status 105 of 239, or 44 percent) to obtain the data
for wealth, occupation, head- of- household, and marital status. For other categories,
such as age, birthplace, and military status, additional sources, such as military
records, encyclopedias, and dictionaries were used. Th
is can be done without jeopar-
dizing consistency or skewing the results. Of course, such an assumption could not be
made with wealth, occupation, or marital status, all of which can easily and signifi -
cantly change through the years. Th
(n=185), and military service (n=182) will be higher than the aforementioned indices.
Furthermore, all agents, whose tenure as agent could be defi nitively determined (with
specifi c starting and ending dates), were examined in this study, including those who
might have served a short period of time. A population that consisted of a large num-
ber of men who had very short tenures with the Bureau could easily skew the fi ndings.
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200
Notes to pages 9–10
For example, if Texas had a signifi cant number who served only a few days or a couple
of months, they would defi nitely not represent the “typical” agents. But that is not the
case. Of those whose tenure could be defi nitively established (n=213), approximately 15
percent served less than three months, and only 27 percent served for less than four
months (n=58). Th
e data for occupation, age, wealth, marital status, and head of house-
hold are from the 1870 federal census. I realize the imperfect compilation of that par-
ticular census, but deemed it necessary for this study. Since a good portion of the
agents before the war lived with their parents, thus rendering it very diffi
cult to locate
them, the 1860 census would not have been as helpful. Due to the inherent problems in
data collection in the nineteenth century and the condition of the country following
the war, approximately half (105, 110, and 139) of the individuals who served as Bureau
agents in Texas were located. Other such studies found a comparable percentage of
their target individuals (see Maris A. Vinovskis, “Have Social Historians Lost the Civil
War? Some Preliminary Demographic Speculations,” in Toward a Social History of the
American Civil War: Exploratory Essays [Cambridge, England and other cities, 1990]:
1–30; W. J. Rorabaugh, “Who Fought for the North in the Civil War? Concord, Massa-
chusetts, Enlistments,” Journal of American History 73 [December 1986]: 695–701;
Th
omas R. Kemp, “Community and War: Th
e Civil War Experience of Two New
Hampshire Towns,” in Toward a Social History of the American Civil War: Exploratory
Essays, ed. Vinovskis, [Cambridge, England and other cities, 1990]: 31–77; and Lowe,
“Freedmen’s Bureau and Local White Leaders in Virginia,” 455–472). Vinovskis located
55 percent, Rorabaugh 48 percent, Kemp 47 percent, and Lowe 52.4 percent,
respectively.
6. Carpenter, Sword and Olive Branch, 101–102.
7. Paul A. Cimbala, “Th
e ‘Talisman Power’: Davis Tillson, the Freedmen’s Bureau,
and Free Labor in Reconstruction Georgia, 1865–1868,” Civil War History 28 (June
1982): 157; Lowe, “Freedmen’s Bureau and Local White Leaders,” 459–460; Bell Irvin
Wiley, Th
e Life of Billy Yank: Th
e Common Soldier of the Union (Baton Rouge: Louisi-
ana State University Press, 1971), 307.
8. According to U.S. Census Records, the population for the United States in 1870
was 38,558,371, with 5,567,229 of those born abroad. Th
e Middle Atlantic had a popula-
tion of 8,810,806; the Upper South had 4,079,915; New England had 3,487,924; the Great
Lakes had 10,318,537, and the states of the former Confederacy had 9,487,386. Th
ese
numbers came from Campbell J. Gibson and Emily Lennon, comp., “Historical Census
Statistics on the Foreign- Born Population of the United States: 1850 to 1990” (unpub-
lished Working Paper No. 29, U.S. Bureau of the Census, February 1999).
9. Richter, Overreached on All Sides, 322; E. M. Gregory to O. O. Howard, Septem-
ber 21, 1865, Letters Received, October 1865–February 1866, Registers and Letters
Received by the Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned
Lands, 1865–1872, Record Group 105, National Archives Records Administration,
Washington, D.C. (Microfi lm M752, reel 24) hereaft er cited M752C. For studies in
other states showing hesitancy to appoint civilian agents, see William T. Alderson,
“Th
e Infl uence of Military Rule and the Freedmen’s Bureau on Reconstruction Vir-
ginia, 1865–1870” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1952), 35–36. Th