Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867: Series 3, Volume 1: Land and Labor, 1865

Chapter 6. Dependency and Relief

6 Dependency and Relief Constructing free labor on the ruins of slavery entailed not only a recasting of workplace relations, but also a reconsideration of the social arrangements that provided for individuals unable to support themselves. Under slavery, owners had been responsible for the maintenance of their slaves—of whatever age or physical condition —from cradle to grave. After emancipation, that responsibility shifted mainly to the former slaves themselves. Freedpeople took up the challenge readily and for the most part met it effectively, ordering their households and communities in ways that enabled the labor of those who could work to support those who could not. Owing, however, to the family separations imposed in slavery and to the upheaval wrought by war and emancipation, large numbers of ex-slaves stood outside such networks of sustenance, often only temporarily, but sometimes for long periods. Thousands of white Southerners, too, ended the war destitute and unable to sustain themselves. The region’s transition from slavery to free labor took place against DepenDency AnD relief 599 the backdrop of a problem of relief whose scope was unprecedented in American history. Responding to the needs of Southerners, black and white, required federal military commanders and Freedmen’s Bureau officials to address a problem characteristic of free labor everywhere: In a society premised on a person’s right to sell his or her labor power in the market, what was to become of people who were incapable of labor or for whose services there was no demand? In the North, practices had evolved to care for those members of a community who were unable to provide for themselves and lacked relatives who could support them. “Paupers,” persons who were permanently dependent on public aid, were either lodged in private households at public expense or committed to institutions. Men and women disabled by age or infirmity often lived out their days in poorhouses. In some states the mentally ill, the deaf, and the blind were housed in special asylums, but elsewhere they too became poorhouse inmates or the wards of individuals who agreed to care for them with funds from the public coffer. Orphaned children and those whose parents could not adequately provide for them were bound out as apprentices or placed in orphanages until they were old enough to work. Paupers were not the only recipients of relief. Men, women, and children requiring more temporary assistance—for example, those thrown out of work by sickness or economic downturn—were sometimes admitted to the poorhouse, contingent on their performing such labor there as they could. More often, public aid to such persons took the form of “outdoor relief”—modest issues of food, fuel, or cash that enabled the recipients to remain in their homes or in another household until they could once again earn their living. Charged with determining applicants’ eligibility for relief were local officials usually known as overseers or superintendents of the poor. They authorized assistance only for individuals who were residents of the community, unable to support themselves, and of proper moral character.Transients and newcomers were generally denied, as were men and women deemed 1. In this essay, quotations and statements of fact that appear without footnotes are drawn from the documents included in the chapter. Secondary accounts of the provision of public and private relief in the South after the Civil War include George R. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen’s Bureau (1955; reprint, New York, 1974), pp. 76–79, 139–44; Robert H. Bremner, The Public Good: Philanthropy and Welfare in the Civil War Era (New York, 1980), chaps. 6–8; Paul A. Cimbala, The Freedmen’s Bureau: Reconstructing the American South after the Civil War (Malabar, Fla., 2005), chap. 4; Mary J. Farmer, “‘Because They Are Women’: Gender and the Virginia Freedmen’s Bureau’s ‘War on Dependency,’” in The Freedmen’s Bureau and Reconstruction : Reconsiderations, ed. Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller (New York, 1999), pp. 161–92; Robert Harrison, “Welfare and Employment Policies of the Freedmen’s Bureau in the District of Columbia,” Journal of Southern History 72 (Feb. 2006): 75–110; William S. McFeely, Yankee Stepfather: General O. O. Howard and the Freedmen (New Haven, Conn., 1968), chap. 5. 600 DepenDency AnD relief dissolute, criminal, or incorrigibly indolent. No matter how great their need, such persons did not rank among “the deserving poor.” In the antebellum South, welfare measures for free people were...