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Freedwomen and the Freedmen's Bureau
Established by congress in early 1865, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands-more commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau-assumed the Herculean task of overseeing the transition from slavery to freedom in the post-Civil War South. Although it was called the Freedmen's Bureau, the agency profoundly affected African-American women. Until now remarkably little has been written about the relationship between black women and this federal government agency. As Mary Farmer-Kaiser clearly demonstrates in this revealing work, by failing to recognize freedwomen as active agents of change and overlooking the gendered assumptions at work in Bureau efforts, scholars have ultimately failed to understand fully the Bureau's relationships with freedwomen, freedmen, and black communities in this pivotal era of American history.
eBook
Freedwomen and the Freedmen's Bureau
Established by Congress in early 1865, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands-more commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau-assumed the Herculean task of overseeing the transition from slavery to freedom in the post-Civil War South. Although it was called the Freedmen's Bureau, the agency profoundly affected African-American women. Yet despite voluminous scholarship on the Bureau, until now remarkably little has been written about the relationship between black women and this federal government agency. Neglected as well has been consideration of the role that mid-nineteenth-century understandings of gender and gender difference played in shaping the outcome of Bureau policy.As Mary Farmer-Kaiser clearly demonstrates in this revealing work, by failing to recognize freedwomen as active agents of change and overlooking the gendered assumptions at work in Bureau efforts, scholars have ultimately failed to understand fully the Bureau's relationships with freedwomen, freedmen, and black communities in this pivotal era of American history.
eBook
The women are the controlling spirits
Reporting that the freedwomen in Houston County, Georgia, refused to work as they had in slavery, Freedmen’s Bureau agent J. D. Harris appealed for guidance from the state’s assistant commissioner during the summer of 1866. “These women seem to feel that they ought not to work,” the agent explained. Indeed, he exhorted, “This year has demonstrated the fact that theywill notwork.” Clearly annoyed, Agent Harris insisted that not only had the freedwomen “been worthless as labourers … but they have given their employers a great deal of trouble.” “Nine tenths of the cases brought before me for adjudication,”
Book Chapter
to put forth almost superhuman efforts to regain their children
Mothers, once fully assured that the power of slavery was gone, were known to put forth almost superhuman efforts to regain their children,” continued Brevet Brigadier General John Eaton, assistant commissioner for the District of Columbia, in his report to the commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau in December 1865. Much impressed, he described their efforts in the first days of freedom as truly remarkable. Indeed, he explained, they were “travelling any distance, daring any perils, and even beating the pugnacious specimens of Christian chivalry in hand-to-hand conflict, and bearing off in triumph the long-sought child.”¹
Now free, however, African American
Book Chapter
that the freed-women … may rise to the dignity and glory of true womanhood
As part of a series of lectures entitledPlain Counsels for Freedmen, Brevet Major General Clinton Fisk, a veteran of the Civil War’s western theater and the first assistant commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau to command operations in Kentucky and Tennessee, imparted these words and “a few additional suggestions” to former slave women as they embarked on their journey as freedwomen. Offering both freedmen and women “a hint or two” about race relations, work and free labor, marriage, home life, and religion, Fisk’sPlain Counselswas part of a broader narrative intent on defining for former slaves the most important
Book Chapter
a weight of circumstances like millstones about their necks to drag and keep them down
Reporting to the assistant commissioner in Virginia more than a year after the Civil War’s end, General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, superintendent of the Freedmen’s Bureau at Fortress Monroe, attempted to convey the seriousness of the condition in which many freedpeople lived in his district. Unsure what to do with hundreds of destitute black women, in particular, he requested assistance. But that assistance did not come. Less than a year later, in January 1867, General Armstrong was still appealing to his superiors with the same concerns. Not satisfied with what had been done thus far for this “large destitute helpless class,”
Book Chapter
strict justice for every man, woman, and child
Describing the state of affairs in Mississippi in the autumn of 1865, Assistant Commissioner Samuel Thomas expressed little hope that former slave women and men could ever obtain justice in his state. “Men, who are honorable in their dealings with their white neighbors,” he explained, “will cheat a negro without feeling a single twinge of their honor; to kill a negro they do not deem murder; to debauch a negro woman they do not think fornication; to take property away from a negro they do not consider robbery.” Clearly discouraged and frustrated, the assistant commissioner insisted that the “reason” for
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\With a Weight of Circumstances Like Millstones About their Necks\: Freedwomen, Federal Relief, and the Benevolent Guardianship of the Freedmen's Bureau
2 With a weight of circumstances like millstones about their necks to drag and keep them down, destitute freedwomen represented the epitome of the worthy poor to Armstrong, son of missionaries, commander of black Union soldiers during the Civil War, and future founder and principal of Hampton Institute. 50 In the end it was the combination of black women's assertiveness and the bureau's grudging willingness to refrain from fully enforcing its policies that afforded some black women a modicum of protection from the vicissitudes of an already harsh reality of extreme poverty, large families, the absence of husbands and fathers, and a labor market that labeled them unproductives.
Journal Article