Freedman's Bureau

Freedmen's Bureau was an organization formed by the Radical Republicans to aid and protect the newly freed blacks in the South after the Civil War. It was established by and act of March 3rd, 1865, under the name of "bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands,"

Between 1865 and 1869, the bureau issued about 15 million rations to blacks and 5 million to whites. By 1867 it had established 45 hospitals staffed with doctors and nurses. Its medical department treated about one million sick people.

Its greatest accomplishments were in education. More than 1,000 black schools were built and over $400,000 were spent to establish teacher-training institutions. All major black colleges were either founded by, or received aid from, the bureau. However, less success was achieved in civil rights,  for the bureau’s own courts were poorly organized and short-lived.

Land, was the biggest failure on the Bureau's part. Prevented by President Andrew Johnson’s restoration of abandoned lands, the bureau was forced to overlook sharecropping arrangements that unavoidably became an inflicting conflict. Congress was already preoccupied with other national interests and the hostility of white Southerners, terminated the bureau in July 1872.