At the end of the Civil War the United States was faced with a massive humanitarian crisis. The South was devastated, its transportation system wrecked and its people facing destitution and starvation.
And struggling with new realities were four million freed slaves, who needed to be educated and employed. Anticipating the crisis, the government created the Freedmen's Bureau in early 1865.
The first commissioner of the bureau was a war hero, General Oliver Otis Howard, who had lost an arm in one Civil War battle and distinguished himself in several others. A New Englander with abolitionist leanings, Howard, for whom Howard University would be named, was the perfect choice for the job.
Although reviled in the South, the Freedmen's Bureau was successful at setting up schools and providing literacy education to freed slaves who had never been allowed to learn to read.
The Freedmen's Bureau was less successful with plans for land redistribution. Promises of Forty Acres and a Mule never materialized, which consigned many former slaves to lives of poverty as sharecroppers.
Read the full article: The Freedmen's Bureau
Illustration: Gen. Oliver Otis Howard/Getty Images
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