American Military History, Volume 1 by Richard W. Stewart

The Civil War settled once and for all the questions of slavery and of state sovereignty, but after Appomattox the problems of reconstruction remained and with them the Army's involvement in Southern affairs. The nation had to be put back together, and the peace had to be won or the sacrifices of a terrible war would have been in vain. The Army had a principal role in reconstruction from the very beginning. As the Union armies advanced in the South, the civil government collapsed, except in Sherman's military district, and the Army found itself acting in place of the civil government by extending the function of its provost marshals from policing troops to policing and in effect governing the occupied areas. The duties of these provost marshals ranged from establishing garbage regulations to trying to determine the loyalty of Southern citizens. Near the end of the war, Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands-the Freedmen's Bureau-and put it under the Army. Its primary purpose was to protect and help the former slaves. In late 1865 most of the governmental functions of the provost marshals were transferred to this bureau headed by Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard, a Civil War corps commander and a professional officer with antislavery convictions of long standing. As early as 1862 President Abraham Lincoln had appointed military governors, civilians functioning with military support, in Tennessee, Louisiana, and North Carolina.

THE ARMY AND THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in March 1865 to handle problems that had already arisen in Union-occupied parts of the South and were sure to persist after the Confederate surrender-especially that of convincing white southerners that slavery was in fact abolished. The Freedmen's Bureau, as it soon became known, was an agency within the Department of War but not a part of the U.S. Army, although its administrators and field agents were commissioned officers of the volunteers and the regulars. Across the rural South, Freedmen's Bureau agents spent most of their working hours adjudicating differences between landless black farmers and white landowners. The bureau also ran schools funded largely by private benevolent organizations and helped veterans of the U.S. Colored Troops file claims for bounties and pensions. Unfortunately, readmission of seceded states seemed more important to the nation than securing the rights of former slaves, and the Freedmen's Bureau never realized its full potential.