Africans in America/Part 4/Narrative
Harriet Tubman as a teacher with New England Freedmen's Aid Society
The Booker T. Washington Papers Can do keyword search for freedmen. For example, he mentions the setting up of temperance societies.
Fruits of Reconstruction (from African-American Odyssey)
Reconstruction (source?)
Teaching the Newly Freed Population Educational Materials related to one item in the African American Odyssey exhibit at the Library of Congress
Racial Desegregation in Public Education in the US By Parks Service, includes info. about freedmen's schools and bureau.
Freedmen and Southern Society Project (based on National Archives resources)
TreasureNet: Historical Image Collection, Civil War
Index to the Register of Signatures of Depositors
Freedman's Savings and Trust Company
1866-1872
Tallahassee, FloridaRemember Chase Letter about starting freedmen's banking.
NORTHERN FEMALE TEACHERS IN SERVICE IN VIRGINIA 1862-1870, WHOSE HOMES HAVE BEEN LOCATED* Includes the Chase sisters.
Northern Schoolmarms in the South Source of the item above. Also includes analysis of movement, and even commentary on the "Imperialist" primers (with pics) used in the schools.
"The Freedmen's Bureau," by W.E.B. DuBois (part of The Online Atlantic) Looks like important/useful source.
Freedmen's Bureau Online Probably very important
Excerpt from The Souls of Black Folk, "Of the Dawn of Freedom", DuBois
"Three characteristic things one might have seen in Sherman's raid through Georgia, which threw the new situation in shadowy relief: the Conqueror, the Conquered, and the Negro. Some see all significance in the grim front of the destroyer, and some in the bitter sufferers of the Lost Cause. But to me neither soldier nor fugitive speaks with so deep a meaning as that dark human cloud that clung like remorse on the rear of those swift columns, swelling at times to half their size, almost engulfing and choking them. In vain were they ordered back, in vain were bridges hewn from beneath their feet; on they trudged and writhed and surged, until they rolled into Savannah, a starved and naked horde of tens of thousands. There too came the characteristic military remedy: "The islands from Charleston south, the abandoned rice-fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. John's River, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of Negroes now made free by act of war." So read the celebrated "Field-order Number Fifteen."
All these experiments, orders, and systems were bound to attract and perplex the government and the nation. Directly after the Emancipation Proclamation, Representative Eliot had introduced a bill creating a Bureau of Emancipation; but it was never reported. The following June a committee of inquiry, appointed by the Secretary of War, reported in favor of a temporary bureau for the "improvement, protection, and employment of refugee freedmen," on much the same lines as were afterwards followed. Petitions came in to President Lincoln from distinguished citizens and organizations, strongly urging a comprehensive and unified plan of dealing with the freedmen, under a bureau which should be "charged with the study of plans and execution of measures for easily guiding, and in every way judiciously and humanely aiding, the passage of our emancipated and yet to be emancipated blacks from the old condition of forced labor to their new state of voluntary industry."
Some half-hearted steps were taken to accomplish this, in part, by putting the whole matter again in charge of the special Treasury agents. Laws of 1863 and 1864 directed them to take charge of and lease abandoned lands for periods not exceeding twelve months, and to "provide in such leases, or otherwise, for the employment and general welfare" of the freedmen. Most of the army officers greeted this as a welcome relief from perplexing "Negro affairs," and Secretary Fessenden, July 29, 1864, issued an excellent system of regulations, which were afterward closely followed by General Howard. Under Treasury agents, large quantities of land were leased in the Mississippi Valley, and many Negroes were employed; but in August, 1864, the new regulations were suspended for reasons of "public policy," and the army was again in control.
Meanwhile Congress had turned its attention to the subject; and in March the House passed a bill by a majority of two establishing a Bureau for Freedmen in the War Department. Charles Sumner, who had charge of the bill in the Senate, argued that freedmen and abandoned lands ought to be under the same department, and reported a substitute for the House bill attaching the Bureau to the Treasury Department. This bill passed, but too late for action by the House. The debates wandered over the whole policy of the administration and the general question of slavery, without touching very closely the specific merits of the measure in hand. Then the national election took place; and the administration, with a vote of renewed confidence from the country, addressed itself to the matter more seriously. A conference between the two branches of Congress agreed upon a carefully drawn measure which contained the chief provisions of Sumner's bill, but made the proposed organization a department independent of both the War and the Treasury officials. The bill was conservative, giving the new department "general superintendence of all freedmen." Its purpose was to "establish regulations" for them, protect them, lease them lands, adjust their wages, and appear in civil and military courts as their "next friend." There were many limitations attached to the powers thus granted, and the organization was made permanent. Nevertheless, the Senate defeated the bill, and a new conference committee was appointed. This committee reported a new bill, February 28, which was whirled through just as the session closed, and became the act of 1865 establishing in the War Department a "Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands." "
Also from Souls of Black Folk (but this time of Bartleby so cleaner to use)
Chapter VI. Of the Training of Black Men
Links to DuBois Materials
Biographical Sketch of Charlotte L. Forten, an African-American teacher, at Afro-American Almanac/
