Too Great a Burden to Bear ─ The Struggle and Failure of the Freedmen's Bureau in Texas

In its brief seven-year existence, the Freedmen's Bureau became the epicenter of the debate about Reconstruction. Cognizant of its responsibilities, partisans fiercely debated its necessity. Historians continued that debate about the agency's policies and necessity. But historians have only recently begun to focus on the Bureau's personnel in Texas, the individual agents termed the "hearts of Reconstruction." Not ignoring individual experiences and attitudes, this work focuses on them at a more personal level. Where were they from? Were they wealthy? Were they married or single? Did the agency prefer the young? Did agents have military experience or were they civilians? What occupations did the Bureau draw from? The answers illuminate the type of man Bureau officials believed qualified - or not - to oversee the freedpeople's transition to freedom. Officials in Texas desired those able to meet emancipation's challenges. That meant northern-born, mature, white men from the middle and upper-middle class, and generally with military experience. Dispelling the idea of a uniform Bureau policy, this work shows that each agent, moved by his sense of fairness and ideas of citizenship, gender, and labor, represented the agency's policy in his subdistrict. They protected freedpeople's labor and established their right to set up a household (and protected within in it). They worked to recognize their marriages, and, despite the practice of apprenticeship, they tried to establish their rights as parents to their children. These men further ensured the former slaves' right to an education and right of mobility, something they never had while in bondage.

Christopher B. Bean is Assistant Professor of History and Native American Studies at East Central University, Oklahoma.