dissenting minority at once claimed to be the Free Church. They met outside the Free Assembly Hall on the 31st of October, and, failing to gain admission to it, withdrew to another hall, where they elected Mr Colin Bannatyne their moderator and held the remaining sittings of the Assembly. It was reported that between 16,000 and 17,000 names had been received of persons adhering to the anti-unionist principle. At the Assembly of 1901 it was stated that the Free Church had twenty-five ministers and at least sixty-three congregations. The character of the church is indicated by the fact that its office-bearers were the faithful survivors of the decreasing minority of the Old Free Church, which had protested against the disestablishment resolutions, against the relaxation of subscription, against toleration of the teaching of the Glasgow professors, and against the use in worship of organs or of human hymns. Her congregations were mostly in the Gaelic-speaking districts of Scotland. She was confronted with a very arduous undertaking; her congregations grew in number, but were far from each other and there were not nearly enough ministers. The Highlands were filled, by the Union, with exasperation and dispeace which could not soon subside. The church met with no sympathy or assistance at the hands of the United Free Church, and her work was conducted at first under considerable hardships, nor was her position one to appeal to the general popular sentiment of Scotland. But the little church continued her course with indomitable courage and without any compromise of principle. The Declaratory Act of 1892 was repealed after a consultation of presbyteries, and the old principles as to worship were declared. A professor was obliged to withdraw a book he had written, in which the results of criticism, with regard to the Synoptic Gospels, had been accepted and applied. The desire of the Church of Scotland to obtain relaxation of her formula was declared to make union with her impossible. Along with this unbending attitude, signs of material growth were not wanting. The revenue of the church increased; the grant from the sustentation fund was in 1901 only £75, but from 1903 onwards it was £167.
The decision of the House of Lords in 1904 did not bring the trials of the Free Church to an end. In the absence of any arrangement with the United Free Church, she could only gain possession of the property declared to belong to her by an application in each particular case to the Court of Session, and a series of law-suits began which were trying to all parties. In the year 1905 the Free Church Assembly met in the historic Free Church Assembly Hall, but it did not meet there again. Having been left by the awards of the commission without any station in the foreign mission field, the Free Church resolved to start a foreign mission of her own. The urgent task confronting the church was that of supplying ordinances to her congregations. The latter numbered 200 in 1907, and the church had as yet only 74 ordained ministers, so that many of the manses allocated to her by the commissioners were not yet occupied, and catechists and elders were called to conduct services where possible. The gallant stand this little church had made for principles which were no longer represented by any Presbyterian church outside the establishment attracted to her much interest and many hopes that she might be successful in her endeavours to do something for the religious life of Scotland.
See Scotland, Church of, for bibliography and statistics. (A. M.*)
FREEDMEN’S BUREAU (officially the Bureau of Freedmen,
Refugees and Abandoned Lands), a bureau created in the
United States war department by an act of Congress, 3rd of March
1865, to last one year, but continued until 1872 by later acts
passed over the president’s veto. Its establishment was due
partly to the fear entertained by the North that the Southerners
if left to deal with the blacks would attempt to re-establish
some form of slavery, partly to the necessity for extending relief
to needy negroes and whites in the lately conquered South,
and partly to the need of creating some commission or bureau
to take charge of lands confiscated in the South. During the
Civil War a million negroes fell into the hands of the Federals
and had to be cared for. Able-bodied blacks were enlisted in the
army, and the women, children and old men were settled in large
camps on confiscated Southern property, where they were cared
for alternately by the war department and by the treasury
department until the organization of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
At the head of the bureau was a commissioner, General O. O.
Howard, and under him in each Southern state was an assistant
commissioner with a corps of local superintendents, agents
and inspectors. The officials had the broadest possible authority
in all matters that concerned the blacks. The work of the bureau
may be classified as follows: (1) distributing rations and medical
supplies among the blacks; (2) establishing schools for them and
aiding benevolent societies to establish schools and churches;
(3) regulating labour and contracts; (4) taking charge of confiscated
lands; and (5) administering justice in cases in which
blacks were concerned. For several years the ex-slaves were
under the almost absolute control of the bureau. Whether this
control had a good or bad effect is still disputed, the Southern
whites and many Northerners holding that the results of the
bureau’s work were distinctly bad, while others hold that much
good resulted from its work. There is now no doubt, however,
that while most of the higher officials of the bureau were good
men, the subordinate agents were generally without character
or judgment and that their interference between the races caused
permanent discord. Much necessary relief work was done,
but demoralization was also caused by it, and later the institution
was used by its officials as a means of securing negro votes.
In educating the blacks the bureau made some progress, but the
instruction imparted by the missionary teachers resulted in
giving the ex-slaves notions of liberty and racial equality that led
to much trouble, finally resulting in the hostility of the whites to
negro education. The secession of the blacks from the white
churches was aided and encouraged by the bureau. The whole
field of labour and contracts was covered by minute regulations,
which, good in theory, were absurd in practice, and which failed
altogether, but not until labour had been disorganized for several
years. The administration of justice by the bureau agents
amounted simply to a ceaseless persecution of the whites who had
dealings with the blacks, and bloody conflicts sometimes resulted.
The law creating the bureau provided for the division of the
confiscated property among the negroes, and though carried
out only in parts of South Carolina, Florida and Georgia, it caused
the negroes to believe that they were to be cared for at the
expense of their former masters. This belief made them subject
to swindling schemes perpetrated by certain bureau agents and
others who promised to secure lands for them. When negro
suffrage was imposed by Congress upon the Southern States, the
bureau aided the Union League (q.v.) in organizing the blacks into
a political party opposed to the whites. A large majority of the
bureau officials secured office through their control of the blacks.
The failure of the bureau system and its discontinuance in the
midst of reconstruction without harm to the blacks, and the
intense hostility of the Southern whites to the institution caused
by the irritating conduct of bureau officials, are indications that
the institution was not well conceived nor wisely administered.
See P. S. Pierce, The Freedmen’s Bureau (Iowa City, 1904); Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction (Washington, 1866); W. L. Fleming (ed.), Documents relating to Reconstruction (Cleveland, O., 1906); W. L. Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (New York, 1905); and James W. Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi (New York, 1901). (W. L. F.)
FREEHOLD, a town and the county-seat of Monmouth county, New Jersey, U.S.A., in the township of Freehold, about 25 m. E. by N. of Trenton. Pop. (1890) 2932; (1900) 2934, of whom 215 were foreign-born and 126 were negroes; (1905) 3064; (1910) 3233. Freehold is served by the Pennsylvania and the Central of New Jersey railways. It is the trade centre of one of the most productive agricultural districts of the state and has various manufactures, including carriages, carpets and rugs, files, shirts, underwear, and canned beans and peas. The town is the seat of two boarding schools for boys: the Freehold Military School and the New Jersey Military Academy (chartered, 1900; founded in 1844 as the Freehold Institute). One of the residences in the town dates from 1755. A settlement was made in the township about 1650, and the township was incorporated