Freedmen's Bureau

Beginnings

The Freedmen's Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands was based on the Port Royal, or Sea Island, Experiment. On November 7, 1861, the U.S. Navy fleet and U.S. Army captured Port Royal Sound, South Carolina, and the adjacent Sea Islands of the Beaufort District. During this military action, the Beaufort District planters abandoned most of their property— including nearly 10,000 slaves on island plantations—and evacuated inland.

The political status of the slaves was unclear. Still considered to be property, they were declared contraband of war and placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase sent Edward L. Pierce to Port Royal to investigate and recommend action to the federal government regarding the contrabands. Pierce, a captain in the Third Massachusetts Regiment, had earlier put former slaves to work building entrenchments at Hampton, Virginia. This was the first instance of employing former slaves to do military work for the U.S. Army.

A print from the July 25, 1868, issue of Harper's Weekly shows a Freedmen's Bureau agent standing between armed groups of southern whites and freedmen, or freed slaves. During the Reconstruction Era in the United States, the Bureau, initiated by President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 and intended to last for only one year after the Civil War, continued to aid distressed freedmen until 1872.

Simultaneously, Reverend Mansfield French of the New York-based American Missionary Association (AMA), which was founded in 1846 as a Protestant and abolitionist organization, was sent to Port Royal to determine what assistance the AMA could render the former slaves. Both Pierce and French arrived at Port Royal in January 1862 [Page 907]in order to institute a joint effort between philanthropic organizations and the federal government that would serve in a custodial role for the contrabands. The heart of the “experiment” was to use the contrabands to harvest and process the valuable Sea Island cotton. In February 1862 Pierce returned to Boston and began actively recruiting volunteers to go south to the Sea Islands in order to assist the effort.

Philanthropic organizations and religious missionaries provided food, clothing, medical help, and education to the effort. The National Freedmen's Relief Association in New York collected donations and enlisted volunteers to assist as well. In March, Pierce was placed in charge of the freedmen and plantations on the islands, along with nearly 60 teachers and superintendents, who established schools and advocated the formation of freedmen's aid societies. The partnership between the federal government and various philanthropic agencies to carry out humanitarian enterprises among the Sea Island blacks continued throughout the Civil War.

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