that the negro must be gotten rid of in some way. . . I have heard it so many times, and from so many different quarters, that I believe it is a fixed determination, and that they are looking anxiously to the extermination of the whole negro race from the country. There is an agent here now, with letters from the governor of Louisiana to parties in New York, with a view of entering at once upon negotiations to secure laborers from various parts of Europe. There are other parties endeavoring to get coolies into the south, and in various places there are immense efforts to obtain white labor to supplant that of the negro. It is a part of the immense and desperate programme which they have adopted and expect to carry out within the next ten years. . . I said the negro race would be exterminated unless protected by the strong arm of the government... The wicked work has already commenced, and it could be shown that the policy pursued by the government is construed by the rebels as not being opposed to it.

The Bureau and the Negro Troops

Report of Joint Committee on Reconstruction, part iii, p. 134. Statement of William L. Sharkey, provisional governor of Mississippi.

[1866]

THERE is no disguising the fact that the Freedmen's Bureau and the colored troops there have done more mischief than anything else. General Howard is a very clever gentleman; but there are men in charge of the Freedmen's Bureau in Mississippi who are disposed to speculate on white and black; they encourage the black and discourage the white man. And wherever there is a negro garrison the free negroes congregate around it, and, as a matter of course, crimes and depredations are committed. I verily believe that if . . all the troops and the Freedmen's Bureau had been withdrawn, I could have had a perfect state of order throughout the State in two weeks. The great amount of complaints originate from the localities where the negro soldiers are. I do not say that the negroes do not make good soldiers, but they encourage the congregation of freedmen around them, and from the freedmen come crime and

abjictions to Ber

a

Realige

Bureau has a staken

situation. The South-Southerners

depredations. As a general thing . . the freedmen have gone to work; some receiving a share of the crops, and some receiving their wages. They certainly have gone to work, as a general thing in the State; and the people are buoyant and hopeful. In some parts of the State freedmen are receiving exceedingly high wages. Mr. Alcorn, my colleague in the senate, authorizes me to state that in the river counties . . if labor could be had, a thousand freedmen could be employed at $25 a month.

A Northern Man's Opinion

Report of Joint Committee on Reconstruction, part iv, p. 148.
Statement of Stephen Powers, correspondent of the Cincinnati
Commercial.
[1866]

It was a necessity particularly in those months immediately
following the close of the war, to secure the distribution of ra-
tions among both the refugees and freedmen, of which they
stood in great need, and without which many thousands would
have perished. Last fall, about the Christmas holidays, early
this winter the bureau was particularly necessary, and did a
great deal of good, and did admirable work in procuring situa-
tions for hundreds and thousands of negroes. . . The bureau
may make itself useful this summer and next fall [1866] in se-
curing a proper distribution of the crops. . . I think it would
also be necessary to continue the bureau until the freedmen gen-
erally have entered into contracts for the year 1867. After that
I think the necessity for the bureau will be removed. Indeed, I
think the necessity for it has already passed away in the State
of Tennessee, and in many portions of other States. . . In
many cases it has fallen into the hands of incompetent and
speculating officers who made it a by-word, and unnecessarily
obnoxious to the people of the State where it was located. . .
The bureau is particularly odious to the people of Texas.
Things were in a chaotic state there generally, and the bureau
as at first organized, and as continued for a great while, was
rather loose in its organization, and rather irresponsible. And
many things were done in Texas and Florida, also, which were
unnecessarily odious to the people, and discriminating in favor

of the blacks. Such things were not generally in the shape of any serious oppressions; but they were simply petty disregards of that sentiment which the southern people entertain, and for which, I think, the officers with wisdom have shown. a little more charity, and thus have added to their usefulness.

Report of Joint Committee on Reconstruction, part ii, p. 139. Botts was a well known Virginia Unionist. As a rule the Unionists were hostile to the Bureau because it tended to unite the whites in one party, thus rendering political division unlikely and making the Unionist influence insignificant. [1866]

I THINK that one of the great difficulties in Virginia, in regard to the colored people, arises from the organization of the Freedmen's Bureau - not that the Freedmen's Bureau is not in itself proper, and perhaps in some localities an indispensable institution, but that it stands very greatly in need of reformation. . . I have heard of a great many difficulties and outrages which have proceeded. . from the ignorance and fanaticism of persons connected with the Freedmen's Bureau, who do not understand anything of the true relation of the original master to the slave, and who have, in many instances, held out promises and inducements which can never be realized to the negroes, which have made them entirely indifferent to work, and sometimes ill behaved. On the other hand, there are many persons connected with the Freedmen's Bureau who have conducted themselves with great propriety; and where that has been so there has been no trouble between the whites and blacks that I know of.

"Productive only of Mischief"

Report of Joint Committee on Reconstruction, part iv, p. 134. Statement of J. D. B. De Bow, editor of De Bow's Review, Director of the Census, 1860.

[1866]

I THINK if the whole regulation of the negroes, or freedmen, were left to the people of the communities in which they live, it will be administered for the best interest of the negroes as well as of the white men. I think there is a kindly feeling on the part of the planters towards the freedmen. They are not

Sort upsets traditional

beder a Lasic Criticism

Kindly to

Negro for Pregndien

held at all responsible for anything that has happened. They
are looked upon as the innocent cause. In talking with a
number of planters, I remember some of them telling me they
were succeeding very well with their freedmen, having got a
preacher to preach to them and a teacher to teach them, be-
lieving it was for the interest of the planter to make the negro
feel reconciled; for, to lose his services as a laborer for even a
few months would be very disastrous. The sentiment prevail-
ing is, that it is for the interest of the employer to teach the
negro, to educate his children, to provide a preacher for him,
and to attend to his physical wants. And I may say I have
not seen an exception to that feeling in the south. Leave the
people to themselves, and they will manage very well. The
Freedmen's Bureau, or any agency to interfere between the
freedman and his former master, is only productive of mis-
chief. There are constant appeals from one to the other and
continual annoyances.
It has a tendency to create dissatisfac-
tion and disaffection on the part of the laborer, and is in every
respect in its result most unfavorable to the system of industry
that is now being organized under the new order of things in
the South. I do not think there is any difference of opinion
upon this subject.

Criticism of the Bureau not Disloyalty

Report of Joint Committee on Reconstruction, part iii, p. 156.
Statement of Gen. John Tarbell, U. S. A.

[1866]

I THINK they have well grounded complaints against the Freedmen's Bureau; and I do not think their criticisms upon that bureau are in every instance dictated by motives of disloyalty. I do not mean to say what proportion of the officers of that bureau are incompetent or corrupt, but that there are many such I have no doubt. In such districts there has been a good deal of complaint, and to a casual observer their comments might be ascribed, perhaps, to motives of disloyalty; but a more careful attention to the subject satisfied me that their complaints were well grounded in a great many cases, for in districts where they had upright, intelligent, and impartial officers of the bureau, the people expressed entire satisfaction.

They stated to me that where they had such officers, and where they had soldiers who were under good discipline, they were entirely welcome, and indeed they were glad to have their presence in some cases approving the action of the bureau officers in punishing white men for the ill treatment of colored people, saying that the officers were perfectly right. In other districts, I am satisfied that it often occurred that bureau officers, wanting in good sense, would show a decided partiality for the colored people, without regard to justice. I am satisfied, also, there were districts where the planters would insure the favor of the bureau officers to them by paying them money; and while they were glad to have their favor, still they would condemn such officers, and in such districts there was dissatisfaction.

The Bureau Demoralized Labor

Ku Klux Report, Alabama Testimony (1871), p. 1132. Testimony of Daniel Taylor, an Alabama planter. [1865-1868]

THE negroes that would go and settle down on plantations and work and stay there always had plenty to eat. The white men who employed them felt bound to keep them in plenty to eat and good clothes to wear when they would stay with them; but if a man was trying to make a negro work, and talked a little short to the negro, he would pick up and go somewhere else, very often when a man had made preparations to go on..

The negroes would quit and go off for this Bureau when they should have had a dependence in the country. They depended upon the Bureau for rations. . . The negroes cheated the farmers out of their labor. . . The negroes were to pay for their provisions out of their part of the crop and they did not go on making their crop, so that their part of the crop was not sufficient to pay the owner the amount that was due him for the land and stock and the advance.

Wade Hampton's Opinion of the Bureau

Letter to President Johnson. Original owned by Mr. T. C. Thompson, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Hampton was the largest slaveholder in the South in 1860. He was one of the first, in 1865, to declare in favor of a qualified suffrage for the negroes. [1866]

THE next step in the progress of reconstruction was quite as