'Full Justice May Be Done Them': The Case of Bill, Charles, Jupiter, Randolph, Et Al. V. William a. Carr in Florida Freedmen's Bureau Court

Chapter 2 focuses on the period of the Civil War and Reconstruction, when formerly enslaved persons, classified as “contrabands” and refugees, were placed as domestic workers in northern households. The involvement of the Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands (the Freedmen’s Bureau) in the placement of refugees as servants prefigured the federal government’s expanded role as a broker of immigrant labor in the decades that followed, yet proved controversial. Designed to reduce government expenditures on the relief of refugees in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, the Freedmen’s Bureau’s financing of black servants’ migration was viewed with skepticism by detractors who claimed that it revived—under the thin veneer of “free” labor—a version of the slave trade. Due to insufficient federal funding, the reluctance of black refugees to relocate to uncertain job situations in the North, and constant questions about its efficacy, the Freedmen’s Bureau—after contracting thousands of women and children to service positions—was ultimately forced to disband this initiative.

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THE FREEDMEN’S BUREAU (1901)

The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century ◽

10.2307/j.ctt1287g49.10 ◽

2014 ◽

pp. 167-188

Keyword(s):

Freedmen's Bureau

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Freedmen’s Bureau Sub-assistant Commissioner

Martin R. Delany's Civil War and Reconstruction ◽

10.14325/mississippi/9781496826633.003.0003 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 47-84

Keyword(s):

South Carolina ◽

Black Family ◽

Land Ownership ◽

Political Rights ◽

Working Relationship ◽

Black Labor ◽

Freedmen's Bureau ◽

Land Redistribution ◽

Self Sufficiency ◽

Contract Laborers

The documents address Delany’s accomplishments as a Freedmen’s Bureau official in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and his views on how to ensure that freedmen had the resources to fully explore the benefits of freedom. They underline the challenges freedmen confronted, and Delany’s success in creating a functional working relationship between ex-slaves and ex-slave owners. His Bureau reports highlighted the advances made by, and challenges confronting, freedmen. He envisioned every black family attaining economic self-sufficiency through land-ownership, and published a series of articles underlining the industrious capacities of blacks and the benefits of making land available to them. However, Delany also realized that land-redistribution would be a challenge, and that freedmen would have no choice but work as contract laborers. He devised a “Triple Alliance” contract system designed to prevent previously unrestricted practice of uncompensated exploitation of black labor. He urged blacks to deemphasize political rights and prioritize instead economic elevation.

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Epilogue

Illusions of Emancipation ◽

10.5149/northcarolina/9781469648361.003.0011 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 338-356

Author(s):

Joseph P. Reidy

Keyword(s):

Civil Rights ◽

New World ◽

Black Americans ◽

Political Rights ◽

Civil Rights Act ◽

Freedmen's Bureau ◽

Racial Democracy ◽

Civil And Political Rights ◽

Freed People ◽

Radical Reconstruction

The defeat of the Confederacy destroyed slavery and the slaveholders' quest for an independent nation. The Freedmen's Bureau, established by Congress weeks before the surrender, aimed to construct a system of compensated labor on the ruins of slavery and to identify and protect the rights that freed people needed to function in the new world of freedom. They encountered strong opposition from former slaveholders, which President Andrew Johnson's lenient reconstruction policy appeared to encourage. When Radical Republicans gained the upper hand, they enacted sweeping legislation designed to reconstruct the seceded states on the principle of racial democracy (the Reconstruction Acts) and to safeguard black Americans' civil and political rights (a Civil Rights Act and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments). But by failing to legislate a redistribution of Southern land, the Radicals squelched the freed people's most cherished hope for economic advancement. Although this and other setbacks-including the violent overthrow of Radical Reconstruction in 1876-dampened hopes, the quest for freedom and equality endured.

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