pointed forms of distress following war. Yet the
proposals of the Bureau as actually established
by the laws of 1865 and 1866 were both simple
and sensible:
1. To oversee the making and enforcement of wage contracts.
2. To appear in the courts as the freedmen’s best friend.
3. To furnish the freedmen with a minimum of land and of capital.
4. To establish schools.
5. To furnish such institutions of relief as hospitals, outdoor stations, etc.
How a sensible people could expect really to conduct a slave into freedom with less than this is hard to see. Of course even with such tutelage extending over a period of two or three decades the ultimate end had to be enfranchisement and political and social freedom for those freedmen who attained a certain set standard. Otherwise the whole training had neither object nor guarantee.
Naturally the Bureau was no sooner established than it faced implacable enemies. The white South naturally opposed to a man because it practically abolished private profit in the exploitation of labor. To step from slave to free labor was economic catastrophe in the opinion of the white
