Concept

Freedmen's Bureau

A federal agency (1865-1872) created to assist formerly enslaved people and poor whites in the postwar South with food, housing, education, labor contracts, and legal disputes.

Formally the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, the Freedmen's Bureau was established by Congress in March 1865 within the War Department. It issued emergency food and medical aid, helped negotiate labor contracts between freedpeople and landowners, ran Freedmen's courts to arbitrate disputes, and was instrumental in founding thousands of schools for Black Southerners. Chronically underfunded and understaffed, and opposed by President Andrew Johnson, the Bureau's authority was allowed to lapse in most of the South by 1869 and it was formally dissolved in 1872.