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2 Overseeing Freedom Victory in the Civil War confirmed for Northerners the superiority of their society, including the labor arrangements in which it was grounded. With slaveholders defeated and slavery destroyed, the way now lay open to remake the South in the image of the North. Liberating the slaves was an indispensable first step, but much more remained to be done. The social and legal institutions of the former slave states would have to be recast, and millions of men and women whose lives had been defined by slavery would have to learn new patterns of thought and behavior. To meet these challenges, the federal government would be compelled to assume unfamiliar responsibilities. By custom and by law, labor relations in both North and South had been regulated by states and localities, not the national government. In the slave states, control over enslaved workers had been vested almost entirely in their owners. Overseeing the South’s passage from slavery to free labor would thus require federal officials to play a novel role and to intrude into day-to-day life in unprecedented ways. oVerseeinG freeDom 171 The task fell primarily to the Union army of occupation and to the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, a newly created agency within the War Department that became familiarly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau. Army officers and Freedmen’s Bureau agents exercised authority over a broad range of activities, including many that in ordinary times were the province of civil officials. They liberated people illegally held in bondage. They reviewed and approved labor contracts, enforced their provisions, refereed disputes between freedpeople and their employers and among freedpeople themselves, and supervised end-of-theyear settlements. With civil police and courts either nonexistent or suspended, the army was charged with suppressing disorder and enforcing the law. Detachments of federal troops made arrests, while provost marshals and Freedmen’s Bureau agents recorded affidavits, heard testimony, adjudicated civil and criminal cases, and even conducted marriage ceremonies. In the realm of education, bureau agents worked with Northern aid societies and the freedpeople themselves to establish and sustain schools. Matters pertaining to relief and social welfare also figured among their duties, including the issue of rations to the indigent and provision of medical care to the sick and disabled. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the army was the principal representative of the federal government in the South. Uppermost among its priorities 1. In this essay, quotations and statements of fact that appear without footnotes are drawn from the documents included in the chapter. On the U.S. army in the South between the end of the Civil War and the end of 1865, see James E. Sefton, The United States Army and Reconstruction , 1865–1877 (1967; reprint, Westport, Conn., 1980), chaps. 1–3; Joseph G. Dawson III, Army Generals and Reconstruction: Louisiana, 1862–1867 (Baton Rouge, La., 1982), chap. 2; William L. Richter, The Army in Texas during Reconstruction, 1865–1870 (College Station, Tex., 1987), chaps. 1–2.On the Freedmen’s Bureau, see George R. Bentley, A Historyof the Freedmen’s Bureau (1955; reprint, New York, 1974); Paul A. Cimbala, The Freedmen’s Bureau: Reconstructing the American South after the Civil War (Malabar, Fla., 2005); Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, eds., The Freedmen’s Bureau and Reconstruction: Reconsiderations (New York, 1999); Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (NewYork, 1988), pp. 142–70; William S. McFeely, Yankee Stepfather: General O. O. Howard and the Freedmen (New Haven, Conn., 1968); Donald G. Nieman, To Set the Law in Motion: The Freedmen’s Bureau and the Legal Rights of Blacks, 1865–1868 (Millwood, N.Y., 1979). Recent studies of the bureau in particular states include Paul A. Cimbala, Under the Guardianship of the Nation: The Freedmen’s Bureau and the Reconstruction of Georgia, 1865–1870 (Athens, Ga., 1997); Barry A. Crouch, The Freedmen ’s Bureau and Black Texans (Austin, Tex., 1992); Randy Finley, From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom: The Freedmen’s Bureau in Arkansas, 1865–1869 (Fayetteville, Ark., 1996); William L. Richter, Overreached on All Sides: The Freedmen’s Bureau Administrators in Texas, 1865–1868 (College Station, Tex., 1991). 2. On the role of army officers and Freedmen’s Bureau agents in supervising labor contracts and year-end settlements, see, in addition to the relevant documents in this chapter, below, chaps. 3, 8. On their involvement in the provision of relief, see, in addition to the relevant documents in this chapter, below...

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