Welfare and employment policies of the Freedmen's Bureau in the District of Columbia

Journal of Southern History

Volumn 72, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 75-110

  Harrison, Robert ^a  

^a ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950221531     PISSN: 00224642     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (328)

1. Oliver Otis Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard (2 vols.; New York, 1907), II, 224-25
2. On the bureau's work in Maryland, see Richard Paul Fuke, Imperfect Equality: African Americans and the Confines of White Racial Attitudes in Post-Emancipation Maryland (New York, 1999), 23-45. The writing of this article was facilitated by a period of research leave funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board. I would also like to thank the anonymous readers for the Journal for their constructive criticism and advice
3. See also Carl Abbott, "Dimensions of Regional Change in Washington, D.C," American Historical Review, 95 (December 1990), 1375-79
4. Constance McLaughlin Green, The Secret City: A History of Race Relations in the Nation's Capital (Princeton, 1967), 58-65
5. Lois E. Horton, "The Days of Jubilee: Black Migration during the Civil War and Reconstruction," in Francine Curro Cary, ed., Urban Odyssey: A Multicultural History of Washington, D.C. (Washington, 1996), 65-78
6. Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington, 1860-1865 (New York, 1941), 235-52
7. James Borchert, Alley Life in Washington: Family, Community, Religion, and Folklife in the City, 1850-1970 (Urbana, Ill., 1980)
8. Donald E. Press, "South of the Avenue: From Murder Bay to the Federal Triangle," Records of the Columbia Historical Society of Washington, D.C., 51 (1984), 51-70
9. On Reconstruction politics in Washington, see Howard Gillette Jr., Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Baltimore, 1995), chap. 3
10. James H. Whyte, The Uncivil War: Washington during the Reconstruction, 1865-1878 (New York, 1958)
11. and Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington: Village and Capital, 1800-1878 (Princeton, 1962), chaps. 12-15
12. Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, eds., The Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction: Reconsiderations (New York, 1999), x
13. For other prominent examples of the "New Freedmen's Bureau Historiography," see Paul A. Cimbala, Under the Guardianship of the Nation: The Freedmen's Bureau and the Reconstruction of Georgia, 1865-1870 (Athens, Ga., 1997)
14. Barry A. Crouch, The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Texans (Austin, Tex., 1992)
15. Randy Finley, From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom: The Freedmen's Bureau in Arkansas, 1865-1869 (Fayetteville, Ark., 1996)
16. Donald G. Nieman, To Set the Law in Motion: The Freedmen's Bureau and the Legal Rights of Blacks, 1865-1868 (Millwood, N. Y., 1979)
17. and Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York, 1988), 142-70
18. For a review of recent scholarship, see John David Smith, "The Work It Did Not Do Because It Could Not': Georgia and the 'New' Freedmen's Bureau Historiography," Georgia Historical Quarterly, 82 (Summer 1998), 331-19
19. Examples of so-called post-revisionist work include William S. McFeely, Yankee Stepfather: General O. O. Howard and the Freedmen (New Haven, 1968), 1-9 and 149-65
20. Louis S. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman: Federal Policy toward Southern Blacks, 1861-1865 (Westport, Conn., 1973), 183-92
21. and Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The After-math of Slavery (New York, 1979), 364-86
22. Earlier historiography is examined in LaWanda Cox, "From Emancipation to Segregation: National Policy and Southern Blacks," in John B. Boles and Evelyn Thomas Nolen, eds., Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honor of Sanford W. Higginbotham (Baton Rouge, 1987), 224-28
23. George R. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen's Bureau (Philadelphia, 1955) remains the only general history of the bureau
24. There is some useful information on the work of the bureau in Howard N. Rabinowitz, Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (New York, 1978), 20-21, 32-34, 128-32, and 153-57
25. Michael W. Fitzgerald deals briefly with the agency in his study of popular politics in Mobile but says little about the ways in which it addressed specifically urban problems. Michael W. Fitzgerald, Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860-1890 (Baton Rouge, 2002), 43-48. Much the same is true of recent accounts of the black experience in other southern cities
26. See, for example, Steven Elliott Tripp, Yankee Town, Southern City: Race and Class Relations in Civil War Lynchburg (New York, 1997)
27. Michael B. Chesson, Richmond after the War, 1865-1900 (Richmond, 1981)
28. Wilbert L. Jenkins, Seizing the New Day: African Americans in Post-Civil War Charleston (Bloomington, 1998)
29. George C. Wright, Life behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930 (Baton Rouge, 1985)
30. and John W. Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago, 1973)
31. There is some discussion of the bureau's operations in New Orleans in Howard A. White, The Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1970), 76-83, 87, 89, 166-200
32. On free-labor ideology, see Eric Foner, Politics and Ideology in the Age of Civil War (New York, 1980), 97-127
33. Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York, 1970), 11-39
34. Berlin et al., eds., Wartime Genesis of Free Labor, 2-6 and 15-16
35. and Jonathan A. Glickstein, Concepts of Free Labor in Antebellum America (New Haven, 1991)
36. For the influence of free-labor ideology on Freedmen's Bureau agents, see in particular Foner, Reconstruction, 143-70
37. and James D. Schmidt, "'A Full-Fledged Government of Men': Freedmen's Bureau Labor Policy in South Carolina, 1865-1868," in Cimbala and Miller, eds., Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction, 219-60
38. Carol Faulkner, Women's Radical Reconstruction: The Freedmen's Aid Movement (Philadelphia, 2004) appeared too recently for its findings to be fully incorporated into this essay
39. On the work of the freedmen's aid societies, see also James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, 1964), 160-77 and 393-405
40. Robert H. Bremner, The Public Good: Philanthropy and Welfare in the Civil War Era (New York, 1980), 98-110 and 129-33
41. Carol Faulkner, "'A Proper Recognition of Our Manhood': The African Civilization Society and the Freedmen's Aid Movement," Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, 24 (January 2000), 41-62
42. Joe M. Richardson, Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861-1890 (Athens, Ga., 1986)
43. Jacqueline Jones, Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865-1873 (Chapel Hill, 1980), 14-30
44. and Ronald E. Butchart, Northern Schools, Southern Blacks and Reconstruction: Freedmen's Education, 1862-1875 (Westport, Conn., 1980), chaps. 1 and 5
45. James D. Schmidt, Free to Work: Labor Law, Emancipation, and Reconstruction, 1815-1880 (Athens, Ga., 1998), 6
46. Elaine Cutler Everly, "The Freedmen's Bureau in the National Capital" (Ph.D. dissertation, George Washington University, 1971), 101 (first quotation) and 126 (second quotation)
47. Allan John Johnston, "Surviving Freedom: The Black Community in Washington, D.C., 1860-1880" (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1980), 291-300 (third quotation on p. 298a). (Johnston's thesis was issued by Garland Publishing in 1993 under the same title, with few changes to the text apart from a new introduction.)
48. See also the discussion of the Freedmen's Bureau in Lois Elaine Horton, "The Development of Federal Social Policy for Blacks in Washington, D.C. after Emancipation" (Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University, 1977), 63-78, 87-90, 92-100, and 123-27
49. Carol Faulkner's Women's Radical Reconstruction contains a good deal of material on the District of Columbia because of the presence there of several prominent, activist women. See especially chaps. 5 and 7. However, its primary focus is on the ideas and actions of the female activists themselves rather than the bureau. Sections of Katherine Masur's recent dissertation also deal with the Freedmen's Bureau, but in this case the primary focus is on black political culture and citizenship
50. "Reconstructing the Nation's Capital: The Politics of Race and Citizenship in the District of Columbia, 1862-1878" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 2001), 53-71
51. Charles H. Howard to Oliver Otis Howard, October 22, 1866, Letters Sent (hereinafter LS), II, 152
52. C. H. Howard to O. O. Howard, October 10, 1867, LS, III, 758a, both on reel 1
53. H. Howard to O. O. Howard, October 10, 1868, LS, IV, 1128, reel 2, NAMS M-1055
54. M. B. Goodwin, "Schools and Education of the Colored Population in the District," in Special Report of the Commissioner of Education, 193-300
55. Green, Washington: Village and Capital, 280-83 and 304-8
56. Lillian G. Dabney, The History of Schools for Negroes in the District of Columbia, 1807-1947 (Washington, 1949)
57. and Masur, "Reconstructing the Nation's Capital," 228-60
58. C. H. Howard to O. O. Howard, October 22, 1866, LS, II, 152, reel 1, NAMS M-1055
59. See also W. F. Spurgin to S. N. Clark, November 20, 1865, AQMR, f.n. 312, reel 13
60. W. F. Spurgin to W. W. Rogers, April 3, 1866, LS, II, 82, reel 1, NAMS M-1055
61. and Johnston, "Surviving Freedom," 242-50
62. C. H. Howard to Max Woodhull, March 3, 1866, LS, I, 451
63. W. W. Rogers to W. F. Spurgin, March 17, 1866, LS, I, 515 (first quotation)
64. C. H. Howard to O. O. Howard, October 22, 1866, LS, II, 152, all on reel 1
65. Spurgin to C. H. Howard, March 22, 1866, LR, I, 1239 (second quotation), reel 5, NAMS M-1055
66. The cleansing may be traced in Spurgin's reports: Spurgin to W. W. Rogers, April 3, 1866, LR, I, 1201
67. Spurgin to W. W. Rogers, March 27, 1866, LR, I, 1268
68. and Spurgin to W. W. Rogers, March 29, 1866, LR, I, 1262, all on reel 5, NAMS M-1055
69. J. V. W. Vandenburgh to W. W. Rogers, July 13, 1867, LR, II, 2348, reel 8, NAMS M-1055
70. For accounts of the whitewashing, see also W. W. Rogers to J. M. Brown, June 19, 1867, LS, III, 287
71. C. H. Howard to O. O. Howard, October 10, 1868, LS, IV, 1128, both on reel 2
72. J. V. W. Vandenburgh to Stuart Eldridge, July 22, 1868, LR, IV, C269, reel 10
73. and J. V. W. Vandenburgh to D. G. Swain, September 29, 1868, AQMR, f.n. 757, reel 13, NAMS M-1055
74. Wm. W. Rogers to O. O. Howard, March 21, 1866, LS, I, 519 (first quotation)
75. S. N. Clark to W. F. Spurgin, September 25, 1865, LS, I, 157 (second and third quotations)
76. S. N. Clark to J. S. Roberts, February 20, 1866, LS, I, 417 (fourth quotation), all on reel 1, NAMS M-1055
77. See also W. W. Rogers to W. F. Spurgin, April 27, 1866, LS, I, 592
78. S. N. Clark to W. F. Spurgin, May 17, 1866, LS, II, 45 1/2
79. C. H. Howard to O. O. Howard, October 22, 1866, LS, II, 152
80. C. H. Howard to O. O. Howard, October 10, 1867. LS III, 758a, all on reel 1
81. J. V. W. Vandenburgh to D. G. Swain, September 29, 1868, AQMR, f.n. 757, reel 13, NAMS M-1055
82. Washington Evening Star, April 3, 1866, p. 2, col. 5
83. J. H. McBlair Jr. to O. O. Howard, July 17, 1866, LR, I, 1838, reel 6, NAMS M-1055
84. S. N. Clark to E. G. Townsend, November 10, 1866, LS, I, 707
85. S. N. Clark to W. W. Rogers, October 6, 1866, LS, II, 137
86. J. H. McBlair Jr. to O. O. Howard, May 12 and 15, July 13, 1866, LR, I, 1437, 1453, and 1836
87. S. N. Clark to W. W. Rogers, October 6, 1866, LR, I, 2330, all on reel 6
88. S. N. Clark to W. W. Rogers, November 10, 1866, LR, II, 130, reel 7
89. and Willett A. Coulter to S. N. Clark, October 18, 1867, LR, III, 510, reel 9, NAMS M-1055
90. Stuart Eldridge to J. V. W. Vandenburgh, March 24 and July 14, 1868, LS, IV, 423 and 773
91. S. N. Clark to Vandenburgh, January 13, 1868, LS, IV, 149
92. On the origins of the Refugees and Freedmen's Fund, see Howard, Autobiography, II, 264-68
93. C. H. Howard to O. O. Howard, October 10, 1867, LS, III, 758a, reel 1
94. Horatio N. Howard to C. H. Howard, July 19 and October 31, 1867
95. Horatio N. Howard to S. N. Clark, December 31, 1867
96. Washington Daily National Intelligencer, October 27, 1865, p. 3, cols. 1-2
97. On the history of the village, see Joseph P. Reidy, "'Coming from the Shadow of the Past': The Transition from Slavery to Freedom at Freedmen's Village, 1863-1900," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 95 (October 1987), 403-28
98. Everly, "Freedmen's Bureau in the National Capital," 48-51
99. Howard, Autobiography, II, 416-22 (first quotation on p. 420)
100. C. H. Howard to O. O. Howard, October 10, 1867, LS, III, 758a, reel 1 (second quotation)
101. J. B. Johnson to C. H. Howard, November 30, 1867, AQMR, f.n. 682, reel 13 (third quotation), NAMS M-1055
102. See also John A. Carpenter, Sword and Olive Branch: Oliver Otis Howard (Pittsburgh, 1964), 185-87
103. and Louise Daniel Hutchinson, The Anacostia Story: 1608-1930 (Washington, 1977), 81-90
104. For examples, see John Eaton to M. Summers, June 20, 1865, LS, I, 2
105. Eaton to Captain Hallow, August 23, 1865, LS, I, 41
106. C. H. Howard to A. K. Brown[e], December 18, 1866, LS, II, 592
107. C. H. Howard to William M. Beebe, January 25, 1867, LS, II, 715, all on reel 1
108. George E. H. Day to Montgomery Meigs, June 26, 1865, Unregistered Letters Received (hereinafter ULR), f.n. 156
109. Mary Contin to W. F. Spurgin, August 11, 1865, ULR, f.n. 422, reel 12
110. J. V. W. Vandenburgh to W. W. Rogers, July 20, 1867, AQMR, f.n. 525
111. W. F. Spurgin to S. N. Clark, August 4, 1865, AQMR, f.n. 259, reel 13, NAMS M-1055 (quotation)
112. For a discussion of unskilled labor in the North, see Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation (Cambridge, Eng., 1998), 36-37 and 63-68
113. and Foner, Reconstruction, 166-67. Spurgin's report sets out the terms for labor contracts recommended by the bureau
114. See, for example, Stuart Eldridge to C. W. Perkins, April 13, 1868, LS, IV, 519, reel 2
115. and Anthony Bowen to O. O. Howard, February 20, 1868, LR, IV, B43, reel 10, NAMS M-1055
116. Thomas R. Johnson, "The City on the Hill: Race Relations in Washington, D.C., 1865-1885" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 1975), 152-66 and 351-59
117. and Borchert, Alley Life in Washington, 167-81
118. On Freedmen's Bureau relief policies, see Bremner, Public Good, 117-21
119. Mary J. Farmer, "'Because They Are Women': Gender and the Virginia Freedmen's Bureau's 'War on Dependency,'" in Cimbala and Miller, eds., Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction, 165-72
120. Cimbala, Under the Guardianship of the Nation, 83-104
121. Martin Abbott, The Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina, 1865-1872 (Chapel Hill, 1967), 37-51
122. Rabinowitz, Race Relations in the Urban South, 128-32
123. Bentley, History of the Freedmen's Bureau, 76-79 and 139-44
124. Ira C. Colby, "The Freedmen's Bureau: From Social Welfare to Segregation," Phyton, 46 (September 1985), 219-30
125. and Victoria Olds, "The Freedmen's Bureau: A Nineteenth-Century Federal Welfare Agency," Social Casework, 44 (May 1963), 247-54
126. John Eaton to George Whipple, November 15, 1865, LS, I, 234
127. S. N. Clark to S. J. Bowen, January 8 and February 1, 1866, LS, I, 332 and 372
128. J. S. Fullerton to O. O. Howard, February 6, 1866, LS, I, 374
129. C. H. Howard, Circular Letter, April 13, 1866, LS, I, 567
130. W. F. Spurgin to S. N. Clark, January 1, 1866, AQMR, f.n. 320, reel 13, all in NAMS M-1055
131. See also Clark to Spurgin, September 6, 1865, LS, I, 109, reel 1
132. Spurgin to Clark, December 30, 1865, LR, I, 458
133. Spurgin to C. H. Howard, April 9 [or 4], 1866, LR, I, 1232, both on reel 5, all in NAMS M-1055
134. and Washington Daily National Intelligencer, March 5, 1866, p. 3, col. 2. Until it received a congressional appropriation in July 1866 the bureau was chronically short of funds. In the District of Columbia its revenue was derived from the residue of the Contraband Fund composed of deductions from the wages of "contraband" workers during the war, as well as the rents from the small number of abandoned and confiscated properties under its control, supplemented by rations, fuel, discarded clothes, and other equipment from the quartermaster general and medicines from the surgeon general of the army
135. See Howard, Autobiography, II, 225-26, 256-58, and 263-65
136. Robert Reyburn to C. H. Howard, July 1, 1867, Reports of Operations of Special Relief Commission, f.n. 607, reel 16
137. J. V. W. Vandenburgh to W. W. Rogers, July 20, 1867, AQMR, f.n. 525, reel 13, all in NAMS M-1055
138. Washington Evening Star, May 12, 1866
139. On the appropriation, see Congressional Globe, 39 Cong., 1 Sess., 1507-9
140. Eliphalet Z. Whittlesey to C. H. Howard, February 19, 1868, LR, IV, B46, reel 10
141. C. H. Howard to O. O. Howard, October 10, 1868, LS, IV, 1128, reel 2, NAMS M-1055
142. Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven, 1990), 133-34 (quotations on p. 133)
143. On the antebellum practice of benevolence, see Bremner, Public Good, chap. 1
144. Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 85-94 and 143-55
145. Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York, 1986), chap. 3
146. Walter I. Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State (6th ed.; New York, 1999), chaps. 4 and 5
147. and Carroll Smith Rosenberg, Religion and the Rise of the American City: The New York City Mission Movement, 1812-1870 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1971), 245-73
148. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence, chaps. 5 and 6
149. Stanley, From Bondage to Contract, 128-30
150. and George M. Fredrickson, The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (New York, 1965), 211-15
151. S. N. Clark to C. H. Howard, January 4, 1868, LR, IV, C4, reel 10 (second quotation)
152. John Eaton to W. F. Spurgin, August 31, 1865, LS, I, 109, reel 1 (fifth quotation)
153. Eliza Heacock to Fullerton, January 19, 1866, Monthly Reports from Visiting Agents (hereinafter MRVA), f.n. 19, reel 14, all in NAMS M-1055
154. Farmer, "'Because They Are Women,'" 165-72
155. S. N. Clark to E. Carpenter, December 5, 1865, LS, I, 265 (quotation)
156. Clark to Associated Press, December 19, 1865, LS, I, 290
157. On Griffing's career, see Keith E. Melder, "Angel of Mercy in Washington: Josephine Griffing and the Freedmen, 1864-1872," in Records of the Columbia Historical Society of Washington, DC, 1963-1965 (Washington, 1966), 243-72
158. Elizabeth Cady Stanton et al., eds., History of Woman Suffrage (6 vols.; New York, 1969), II, 26-39
159. Faulkner, Women's Radical Reconstruction, 31-32, 57-60, 83-99, and 117-31
160. McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 389-92
161. W. W. Rogers to J. M. Brown, July 24, 1866, LS, II, 298, reel 1
162. Special Orders, 1867, No. 46 (March 22), SO, f.n. 110, reel 13, NAMS M-1055
163. Melder, "Angel of Mercy in Washington," 254-55
164. See, for example, Wm. W. Rogers to Mrs. J[osephine] S. Griffing, June 3, 1867, LS, III, 225
165. C. H. Howard to Griffing, November 16, 1867, LS. III, 831a, both on reel 1
166. Willett Coulter to F. E. Town, November 6, 1867, LR, III, 722
167. E. G. Townsend to J. V. W. Vandenburgh, November 29, 1867
168. J. S. Griffing to Vandenburgh, October 26 and November 26, 1867, both filed with LR, III, 722
169. Griffing to S. N. Clark, November 18, 1867, LR, III, 859
170. and S. S. Chamberlain to Vandenburgh, October 29, 1867, LR, III, 883, all on reel 9, NAMS M-1055
171. J. V. W. Vandenburgh to Stuart Eldridge, March 31 (first quotation), April 6, 7 (second and third quotations), and 9, 1868, LR, IV, C115, C125, C128, and C133, reel 10, NAMS M-1055
172. See also S. N. Clark to Vandenburgh, April 2, 1868, LS, IV, 473
173. Eldridge to Mrs. J. S. Griffing, April 3, 7, 9, and 10, 1868, LS, IV, 477, 494, 505, and 508
174. Eldridge to Vandenburgh, April 7, 1868, LS, IV, 493, all on reel 2, NAMS M-1055
175. Melder, "Angel of Mercy," 260-62
176. See also the exchange of letters between Griffing and Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, reprinted in Stanton et al., eds., History of Woman Suffrage, II, 36-37
177. J. V. W. Vandenburgh to D. G. Swain, September 29, 1868, AQMR, f.n. 757, reel 13 (first quotation)
178. Vandenburgh to Stuart Eldridge, March 31 (second quotation) and April 10, 1868, LR, IV, C115 and C134, reel 10, NAMS M-1055
179. The roster for July 1868, for example, lists Griffing and five others. Ibid., f.n. 468
180. J. V. W. Vandenburgh to Stuart Eldridge, March 31, 1868, LR, IV, C115, reel 10, NAMS M-1055
181. On freedwomen's employment, see Leslie A. Schwalm, A Hard Fight for We: Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina (Urbana, Ill., 1997), 249-57
182. Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York, 1985), 45 and 58-59
183. and John B. Ellis, The Sights and Secrets of the National Capital (New York, 1869), 496
184. Washington Evening Star, August 23, 1867, p. 2
185. John Eaton to George B. Carse, June 16, 1865, LS, I, 1, reel 1, NAMS M-1055
186. On the bureau's employment program, see also William Cohen, At Freedom's Edge: Black Mobility and the Southern White Quest for Racial Control, 1861-1915 (Baton Rouge, 1991), 78-97
187. Everly, "Freedmen' s Bureau in the National Capital," 95-99
188. Horton, "Federal Social Policy," 92-100
189. W. F. Spurgin to S. N. Clark, November 1, 1865, AQMR, f.n. 305, reel 13 (first quotation)
190. C. H. Howard, Circular Letter to Colored Churches, October 15, 1866, LS, II, 146, reel 1 (second and third quotations), NAMS M-1055
191. On the evolution of the employment program, see also S. N. Clark to W. F. Spurgin, September 6, 1865, LS, I, 129
192. For threats to deny assistance, see Clark to Perry Davis, March 20, 1867, LS, III, 18, reel 1
193. and Clark to Vandenburgh, January 20, 1868, LS, IV, 178, reel 2, NAMS M-1055
194. W. W. Rogers to J. S. Griffing, April 10, 1866, LS, I, 557
195. Circular Letter, December 10, 1866, LS, II, 549
196. S. N. Clark to E. A. Merrell, February 27, 1867, LS, II, 933, all on reel 1, NAMS M-1055
197. On the development of the bureau's transportation policy, see also Cohen, At Freedom's Edge, 46-59 and 78-82
198. The charges made by the New York papers against the bureau are described in the Washington Evening Star, March 1, 1866, p. 2 (first quotation)
199. See also W. W. Rogers to W. F. Spurgin, April 11, 1866, LS, I, 559, reel 1
200. and J. S. Griffing to C. H. Howard, May 30, 1866, LR, I, 1533, reel 6, NAMS M-1055
201. C. H. Howard to H. G. Stewart, June 22, 1866, LS, II, 100, reel 1
202. Vandenburgh to D. G. Swain, September 27, 1868, AQMR, f.n. 525 and 757, all on reel 13
203. F. E. Town to George W. Livermore, November 7, 1867, LS, III, 778, reel 1, NAMS M-1055
204. Wm. F. Spurgin to Wm. W. Rogers, July 20, 1866, Reports from Employment Offices (hereinafter REO), f.n. 297, reel 14
205. J. V. W. Vandenburgh to Rogers, July 20, 1867
206. Horton, "Federal Social Policy," 95. Griffing, working on behalf of the NFRADC, made separate reports until October 1866
207. John Eaton to George B. Carse, June 16, 1865, LS, I, 1, reel 1
208. Carse to Eaton, June 23 and July 18, 1865, ULR, f.n. 134 and 238, reel 12, NAMS M-1055
209. Washington Evening Star, August 18, 1865, p. 2, col. 4
210. S. N. Clark to P. P. Burgevin, March 6, 1866, LS, I, 459, reel 1, NAMS M-1055
211. See also Clark to J. V. W. Vandenburgh, January 20, 1868, LS, IV, 178, reel 2, NAMS M-1055
212. W. F. Spurgin to John Eaton, September 11, 1865, ULR, f.n. 716, reel 12 (first quotation)
213. J. E. Wall to S. N. Clark, January 20, 1866, MRVA, f.n. 27, reel 14 (second quotation)
214. On conditions in Maryland, see Fuke, Imperfect Equality, 24-30
215. and Barbara Jeanne Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, 1985), 137-66
216. Wm. W. Rogers to S. Tyler Reade, January 23, 1867, LS, II, 708
217. Rogers to E. F. Malone, February 26, 1867, LS, II, 936, both on reel 1, NAMS M-1055
218. C. H. Howard to J. V. W. Vandenburgh, March 16, 1866, LS, II, 64 (first quotation)
219. Howard to Vandenburgh, March 14, 1866, LS, II, 59 (second and third quotations)
220. C. H. Howard to W. F. Spurgin, March 26, 1866, LS, II, 75, all on reel 1, NAMS M-1055
221. The experience of northern planters in the South is described in Lawrence N. Powell, New Masters: Northern Planters during the Civil War and Reconstruction (New Haven, 1980)
222. S. N. Clark to J. S. Griffing, February 15, 1866, LS, I, 398, reel 1
223. J. V. W. Vandenburgh to W. F. Spurgin, June 30, 1866, REO, f.n. 289, reel 14, NAMS M-1055
224. O. O. Howard and C. H. Howard to George B. Fisher, April 15, 1867, LS, III, 101, reel 1, NAMS M-1055
225. The resettlement of freed laborers in the North after 1865 was all the more remarkable in view of the government's adamant refusal to contemplate any such movement during the war itself. V. Jacque Voegeli, "A Rejected Alternative: Union Policy and the Relocation of Southern 'Contrabands' at the Dawn of Emancipation," Journal of Southern History, 69 (November 2003), 765-90. The policy against wartime resettlement resulted from the administration's political sensitivity to northern fears of an influx of former slaves
226. See also Leslie A. Schwalm, "Overrun with Free Negroes': Emancipation and Wartime Migration in the Upper Midwest," Civil War History, 50 (June 2004), 145-74
227. Washington Daily National Intelligencer, March 6, 1867, p. 3, col. 2 (first quotation)
228. J. S. Griffing to O. O. Howard, July 30, 1865, ULR, f.n. 352, reel 12 (second quotation)
229. C. C. Jewett to C. H. Howard, April 15, 1867, LR, II, 1712, reel 8 (third quotation), NAMS M-1055
230. See also S. N. Clark to George W. Pratt, December 20, 1866, LS, II, 603, reel 1
231. Clark to C. H. Howard, February 11, 1867, LR, II, 914, reel 7
232. J. S. Griffing to John Eaton, November 20, 1865, LR, I, 261, reel 4
233. Griffing to C. H. Howard, May 30, 1866, LR, I, 1533, reel 6, NAMS M-1055
234. Olive Gilbert, ed., Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Bondswoman of Olden Time (New York, 1991), 191-99
235. and Carleton Mabee, "Sojourner Truth Fights Dependence on Government: Moves Freed Slaves off Welfare in Washington to Jobs in Upstate New York," Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, 14 (January 1990), 7-26
236. Gavin Wright, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War (New York, 1986)
237. Joshua L. Rosenbloom, Looking for Work, Searching for Workers: American Labor Markets during Industrialization (New York, 2002), 33-45 and 51-55
238. C. L. Woodworth to O. O. Howard, July 25, 1866, LR, I, 2138, reel 6 (first, second, and third quotations)
239. Mary S. Sears to O. O. Howard, March 24, 1867, LR, II, 1612 (fourth quotation)
240. Anna Lowell to C. H. Howard, December 15, 1866, LR, II, 2588 (fifth quotation)
241. Ralph Haskins to S. N. Clark, March 28, 1867, LR, II, 1473, reel 8, NAMS M-1055
242. Elizabeth Hafkin Pleck, Black Migration and Poverty: Boston, 1865-1900 (New York, 1979), 21-22. Pleck suggests that Bostonians were willing to employ black women in domestic service because manufacturing employment was attracting young white women. Also, the immigration of foreign workers was slackening
243. Anna Lowell to Gen. [C. H.] Howard, December 9, 1867, LR, II, 869, reel 7 (first quotation)
244. S. N. Clark to Lyman Abbott, April 6, 1866, LS, II, 32, reel 1 (second quotation), NAMS M-1055
245. See, for example, C. H. Howard to Lewis Tappan, April 21, 1866, LS, II, 53
246. Howard to W. H. Skinner et al., January 25, 1867, LS, II, 723
247. S. N. Clark to N. J. Burton, March 9, 1867, LS, II, 998, all on reel 1
248. H. G. Stewart to J. V. W. Vandenburgh, March 9, 1866, LR, I, 884, reel 5
249. Anna Lowell to C. H. Howard, November 1, 1866, LR, II, 143
250. C. C. Jewett to C. H. Howard, January 23, 1867, LR, II, 920, reel 7, NAMS M-1055
251. J. M. McKim to John Eaton, August 11, 1865, ULR, f.n. 502, reel 12 (first and second quotations)
252. Anna Lowell to C. H. Howard, December 9, 1867, LR, II, 869, reel 7 (third quotation), NAMS M-1055
253. See also C. H. Howard to "Miss Buttrick" [A. E. Butterick], October 8, 1868, LS, IV, 1111, reel 2
254. and H. G. Stewart to C. H. Howard, October 8, 1867, LR, III, 578, reel 9, NAMS M-1055
255. C. H. Howard to Anna Lowell, April 4, 1867, LS, III, 66 (quotation)
256. C. H. Howard to O. O. Howard, October 10, 1867, LS, III, 78a, reel 1
257. S. N. Clark to C. H. Howard, February 11, 1867, LR, II, 914, reel 7
258. Sarah Woodbury to C. H. Howard, May 24, 1867, LR, II, 2153, reel 8, NAMS M-1055
259. Faulkner, "'Proper Recognition of Our Manhood,'" 52-57
260. Pleck, Black Migration and Poverty, 25-29. The Cambridge school also received migrants from the area around Hampton, Virginia
261. See Anna Lowell, Report of the Howard Industrial School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 4, 1867, Monthly Reports on Operations of Industrial Schools, f.n. 100, reel 14, NAMS M-1055
262. S. N. Clark to C. H. Howard, November 22, 1867, LR, III, 856, reel 9
263. Clark to Howard, December 31, 1867, and April 27, 1868, AQMR, f.n. 706 and 724, reel 13
264. with reference to the Providence, Rhode Island, operation, J. A. Sladen to C. H. Howard, August 21, 1867, LR, III, 146, reel 9
265. and, in general, Clark to Howard, July 23, 1867, LR, II, 2423, reel 8, NAMS M-1055
266. See also Everly, "Freedmen's Bureau in the District of Columbia," 111-18
267. J. S. Griffing to C. H. Howard, October 20, 1866, LR, II, unnumbered, f.n. 63, reel 7 (first quotation)
268. Griffing to C. H. Howard, October 5, 1867, LR, III, 420, reel 9 (second quotation)
269. Griffing to C. H. Howard, October 9, 1866, REO, f.n. 350, reel 14, NAMS M-1055
270. H. G. Stewart to C. H. Howard, October 4, 1866, and October 31, 1867, REO, f.n. 347 and 509, reel 14
271. S. N. Clark to C. H. Howard, February 11, 1867, LR, II, 914, reel 7 (first quotation)
272. Anna Lowell to C. H. Howard, September 1, 1867, LR, III, 169, reel 9 (other quotations), NAMS M-1055
273. S. N. Clark to W. M. Beebe, December 12, 1866, LS, II, 560
274. C. H. Howard to Beebe, April 29, 1867, LS III, 139, both on reel 1
275. Clark to C. H. Howard, February 11, 1867, LR, II, 914, reel 7, NAMS M-1055
276. See also Robert Francis Engs, Freedom's First Generation: Black Hampton, Virginia, 1861-/890 (Philadelphia, 1979), 117
277. Report of the Howard Industrial School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 4, 1867, Monthly Reports on Operations of Industrial Schools, f.n. 102, reel 14, NAMS M-1055
278. Ralph Haskins to S. N. Clark, March 28, 1867, LR, II, 1473
279. C. C. Jewett to C. H. Howard, April 15, 1867, LR, II, 1712, reel 8, NAMS M-1055
280. On discrimination against African Americans in the employment market of northern cities, see Theodore Hershberg, ed., Philadelphia: Work, Space, Family, and Group Experience in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1981), 368-91 and 467-73
281. David M. Katzman, Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana, Ill., 1973), 104-34 and 217
282. and Kenneth L. Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870-1930 (Urbana, Ill., 1976), 19-24 and 66-90
283. C. H. Howard to O. O. Howard, October 22, 1866, LS, II, 152 (first quotation)
284. C. H. Howard to Anna Lowell, December 14, 1866, LS, II, 580, reel 1 (second quotation)
285. J. S. Griffing to C. H. Howard, October 20, 1866, LR, II, unnumbered, f.n. 63, reel 7 (remaining quotations), NAMS M-1055
286. See also W. F. Spurgin to S. N. Clark, November 1, 1865, AQMR, f.n. 305, reel 13
287. L. M. E. Ricks to C. H. Howard, November 14, 1866, LR, II, 242, reel 7, NAMS M-1055
288. Washington Daily National Intelligencer, September 25, 1865, p. 3, col. 2
289. Mabee, "Sojourner Truth Fights Dependence," 14-15
290. J. S. Griffing to Sojourner Truth, April 14, 1867, in Gilbert, ed., Narrative of Sojourner Truth, 275
291. See also C. H. Howard to Gen. Samuel C. Armstrong, April 11, 1867, LS, III, 89, reel 1, NAMS M-1055
292. and W. W. Rogers to A. K. Browne, July 13, 1867, LS, III, 335, both on reel 1
293. M. V. Wright to Vandenburgh, July 15, 1867
294. O. O. Howard to Josephine S. Griffing, September 23, 1867
295. Anna Lowell to S. N. Clark, October 14, 1867
296. E. Sanderson to Wright, October 15, 1867 (papers relating to a board of inquiry), all in LR, III, 875, reel 9
297. W. W. Rogers to Sarah A. Tilmon, May 30, 1867, LS, III, 212
298. Rogers to Vandenburgh, July 12, 1867, LS, III, 332, both on reel 1
299. Rogers to J. S. Roberts, March 8, 1867, LR, II, 1276, reel 8
300. and Ann B. Earle to O. O. Howard, January 24, 1868, LR, IV, f.n. 759, reel 10, NAMS M-1055
301. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Terri Hume Oliver (New York, 1999), 28
302. W. F. Spurgin to C. H. Howard, March 1, 1866, AQMR, f.n. 329, reel 13, NAMS M-1055
303. and Schmidt, "'Full-Fledged Government of Men,'" 238, 240, and 248-19
304. See Schmidt, "'Full-Fledged Government of Men'"
305. and Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901 (Cambridge, Mass., 2001)
306. On the social context in which the antebellum free-labor ideology developed, see Foner, Free Soil, 11-39
307. Engs, Freedom's First Generation, 115-16
308. Tripp, Yankee Town, Southern City, 166
309. and Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long, 318
310. C. H. Howard to Anna Lowell, December 14, 1866, LS, II, 580, reel 1, NAMS M-1055
311. See also Howard to H. C. Dunham, January 21, 1867, LS, II, 698
312. and Howard to Lowell, April 4, 1867
313. Howard to Committee of Industrial School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 6, 1867
314. S. N. Clark to J. V. W. Vandenburgh, November 1, 1867, LS, III, 66, 151, and 764, all on reel 1, NAMS M-1055
315. On the practice in the antebellum North, see Schmidt, Free to Work, chaps. 1 and 2
316. Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859-1877 (Cambridge, Eng., 1990), 14-15 and 122-23
317. Morton Keller, Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 85-121 and 197-222
318. For varying interpretations of the postbellum American state, see Bensel, Yankee Leviathan
319. Keller, Affairs of State
320. Stephen Skowronek, Building a New-American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 (Cambridge, Eng., 1982), esp. chap. 2
321. and Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), Part I
322. Richardson, Christian Reconstruction
323. E. Allen Richardson, "Architects of a Benevolent Empire: The Relationship between the American Missionary Association and the Freedmen's Bureau in Virginia, 1865-1872," in Cimbala and Miller, eds., Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction, 119-39
324. and, for the District of Columbia, Everly, "Freedmen's Bureau in the National Capital," 34-37 and 56-69
325. Butchart, Northern Schools, Southern Blacks, and Reconstruction
326. Robert C. Morris, Reading, 'Riting, and Reconstruction: The Education of Freedmen in the South, 1861-1870 (Chicago, 1981)
327. and James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Chapel Hill, 1988)
328. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, 28