Relief
Its first and most immediate job was to provide for war refugees, many of whom were white. In Savannah with Sherman, it gave relief only to whites including some of the six thousand poor white refugee families that had been in Sherman’s path. Blacks were told to return to the plantations, even though most had been abandoned.
By late 1865, the bureau had 200 agents scattered throughout Georgia. It issued three pounds of bacon, a peck of cornmenal and a pint of molasses per adult per week, the equivalent of poor slave rations. The fact that any federal relief was available to blacks incensed planters. They wanted hunger to drive freed people into signing the one-sided labor contracts which at first offered only one-tenth of the bureaus recommended minimum wage.
President Johnson, having failed to kill the bureau, was determined to undo the more liberal Congressional policies. Following the Congressional override of his veto the bureau continued its work of
Relief
Regulation of black labor
Administration of justice for blacks
The management of abandoned and confiscated
land and property until July 1, 1869
Providing education for African Americans
was its greatest area of success
1865: The Freedmen’s Bureau reported a 22 percent death rate for blacks in Georgia, but modern researchers have declared this rate about 12 times too high. Some whites predicted the extinction of blacks. Judge C.H. Sutton of Clarkesville wrote in July 1865 that he believed Negroes would die out as a race in fifty years. The freedpeople “were in rags and wretchedness.”
1866, January 10: A freedmen’s convention of 100 meets at Augusta with the Rev. James Porter of Savannah as Chairman. Far from being radical, they are on record favoring equal pay, voting rights, jury duty, equality in public accommodation, and universal education. The convention formed the Georgia Equal Rights Association, headed by white Republican J.E. Bryant. Branches were established in several cities advocating black rights and to notify the North of the reign of terror against blacks.
1866, February 1: Congress responds to outrages occurring across the South by overriding President Johnson’s veto of the extension of the Freedmen’s Bureau, further authorizing it to extend military protection to freed people, a duty the Bureau was unable to fulfill.
1890s: Black government workers suffered force-outs in the 1890s and 1900s. Many black postal workers were attacked in attempts to drive them from these jobs. Isaac A. Loften, postmaster of Hogansville, Georgia, was shot three times and was forced to relocate.